RedPubPod #026 ’Round Here

[00:00:00] RedPubPod, nd RedPubPod 977 RedPubPod Great Plum Good morning! Good afternoon! Good evening, out there in podcast... This is Robert Kamai, coming to you to learn from the Pushwelded studios of Catabapt Valley Community College, It is another episode of RedPubPod, nd REDPubPod, nd RedPubMet Help Publications

[00:00:29] I'm here today with my graphic artist, Parxalance, Natalie Zimmerman and then with the multiple ends at the end. And today we are going to talk to two wonderful local creatives, poet Scott Owens, and photographer, Barn Nun, Clayton, Jo Young. So how you found this doing today?

[00:00:50] Doing well. Thanks. Pretty good. Or tonight or next week or whenever people are listening to this podcast, they, these guys have a new book. Coming from Redhawk Publications, called Round Here. Images from and near Catava County, and it's poems by Scott Owens and photographs by Clayton Jo Young.

[00:01:10] I mean, remind you about who these guys are. Scott Owens is the author of 20 collections of poetry and recipient of awards from the Academy of American poets. His poems have been featured on the writer's All-Mannac 8 times. He holds degrees from Ohio University, UNC Charlotte,

[00:01:28] and UNC Greensboro, and he is also the owner and operator of tasteful beans, coffee house, and gallery in Hickory, North Carolina. And you're also the coordinator of poetry Hickory. How many years have we had poetry Hickory? We are in our 18th year now.

[00:01:44] Eighteen years of that second to use day in every month. That's wonderful. Kind Jo Young is the author of 11 books. It isn't award-winning photographer with a background in photojournalism. In 2014, Young earned the certified professional photographers designation from professional photographers of America. And in 2015 earned an MFA in photography

[00:02:07] from Savannah College of Art and Design. And Jo has worked with Red Hawk a lot. Scott has published quite a few books through Red Hawk publications, but Jo has worked with us on with students taking photographs for the Newton-Vennail book, the Hickory-Vennail book,

[00:02:27] the Salem Lutheran Church Book that we just did. What else do you? Yeah, the Red GV work we did, Henry River Mill Village was like one of the first ones that we worked on. New little intonacis. Oh yes, an emblinetonacis, the history of Ketabovali community college.

[00:02:47] All these books are available on RedHawkPublications.com, where you can visit anytime of the day or night. And if right now, if you use fall 23, that's FAL-L-L-2-3 at your end of cart work, you will receive 25% off your entire cart.

[00:03:09] So, round here, fellas, how does collaboration come about? I think it was my idea. I don't know exactly, well in the coffee shop, Jo and I had done a collaboration years ago called Country Rose.

[00:03:29] He had sent me a bunch of photos and asked me if I could write poems to go with them. And so it was kind of driven by the photos at that time. And up at the coffee shop, we've had copies of the book available.

[00:03:44] And I would see people looking at them and then they would come up quite often and say, where is that house? And I would say, well you'd have to ask Jo because I don't know exactly. I think that was an iradel county.

[00:03:57] And they'd say, well, I thought it was here in Ketabovali county. I've seen a house look just like that here in Ketabovali county. And I said, no, I think that was an iradel county. And then they'd walk out without buying the book.

[00:04:07] And I think after enough times of that, I thought, well, I need a book for I can say, yeah, that's here in Ketabovali county. So and over the years, I had been writing plenty of poems about Ketabovali county locations.

[00:04:21] So I finally reached out to Jo and said, hey, let's do another book. Let's do it the opposite way. I've got all these poems. And some of them, I know you have photos that go with them because I've seen the photos

[00:04:34] in some of the books that you've already mentioned, like West of Mercy is one that I saw and the bird house. And so I just reached out to Jo and asked him about it. And he said, yeah, I'm so busy. I couldn't possibly do another book.

[00:04:47] But okay, let's go with anyone. Yeah, it's much harder for this book. It was a lot easier taking a lot of pictures and it's given them to him. It's a little bit harder going the other way around.

[00:04:58] One thing, and also, I brought about, usually every one of students saying every year and we take pictures in downtown Hickory. And we were doing like an afflits series and he saw that. That kind of gave him an idea too, to get started on this publication. Yeah.

[00:05:10] Yeah, I went to line those back in the acknowledgments. Scott, that some of the poems have appeared before. In fact, there's a poem in this book that comes from your book that you did for us. Oh, blast, I can't find it now.

[00:05:28] Is it a big knowledge of your other preposition? And Scottville of Stars and Dreaming. So there's some of the poems are from there. And so Joe, these photographs have not appeared anywhere else. There's a couple of them that have. Okay.

[00:05:46] Okay, but the majority of them were you there. Yeah, most of them were new photographs I've taken in the last year. Okay, because the book is a really nice size. It's an eight and a half by 11 full-size portrait book.

[00:05:58] And it's in full color with the best paper that the printer will allow. So it presents very, very well. Scott, there's a poem in here called Mill Village. And there's a photograph of the Henry River Mill Village. Other poets have tried to tackle Henry River Mill Village.

[00:06:22] What made you want to tackle Henry River Mill Village? Well, I think at a certain point in writing the poems or gathering the poems, I just kind of seemed to me like we should have a poem about most.

[00:06:36] You can ever do all, but most familiar and recognizable sites in Katoba County. And if I'm talking to, if I'm traveling and talking to people about Katoba County, what they ought to do if they're going to visit Katoba County,

[00:06:51] at least driving through Henry River Mill Village is one of the things I always mentioned. Everyone has the association with the district 12 from 100 games. Yeah, thank you, 100 games.

[00:07:04] You know, the older I get the more often I have to do that and I'm always happy to have people around who will fill in the words for them. You'll have to fill in words for everybody else. I do the same thing. And I can remember the process

[00:07:19] on a lot of these. This photo already existed, I believe. And I saw it somewhere. I don't exactly remember in which book I saw it or it might have been on Joe has some prints that he keeps up at the shop available to sell as well.

[00:07:36] It might have been on one of those, but I did think it was the perfect picture for to go with the poem. Clayton Joe Young is nodding. That's certainly not a big deal. They're stuck with him, Peter. We did one of our first publication.

[00:07:49] Yeah, we see what we want to say. The question is one of the earliest publications from Red Hot Publications where TNP are had now remind me, Joe, were those poems that you went into pictures or were those pictures where TN wrote the poem?

[00:08:04] This was kind of a both kind of a work off each other without one. And this was also before the property had been purchased by the investors, Calvin Ryes and his family.

[00:08:15] So a lot of it was run down and it didn't seem like it was long for the world. I was worried that the book was in the end, I think it lasted for the place. Yeah, so the reason is I worked really hard on that one.

[00:08:26] And we figured that might be the last remnant of Henry River Mill Village, but apparently the the Ryes family has decided to keep it and they are slowly but surely making it a place that people want to go at destination.

[00:08:42] Nice one is a happy end and there's something like that. We're sitting on a ruinous thickness of that. Exactly, we were able to get something in that book before it went to Paris that let everybody know that it had been saved.

[00:08:56] I think that the Mill Village and that photo in particular, I mean if you came to this book without any prior knowledge of Henry River Mill Village and you looked at the photo, you would think that this was a photo from 1930s perhaps.

[00:09:10] There's nothing in this photo that says, hey, this is 2023. And that's one of the things that was my motivation for this book was the way in which Hickory and Katoba County in a larger sense has retained history.

[00:09:28] I live for 10 years in Charlotte and not say anything bad about Charlotte but the Modus Upper End day in Charlotte was anytime they needed a new space. They would just not down whatever old was there. Right. And in Hickory, we don't seem to do that.

[00:09:43] We transform old into something new while retaining some character from the old as well. And so I appreciate that about Henry River Mill Village. I appreciate that about Hickory and Katoba in general. That leads to the question that I have about your chapters in here, your separators.

[00:10:03] We have the first section is called used to. U-S-E-D and then capital T-A-U-2. And then we have after that steel S-T-I-L-L, then we have a section called Weib-Work. Yeah, weib-Work. And then is that the last section now? Yes.

[00:10:26] What do those names and what do those sections represent to the person going through this book? There was one final section called Keeper. Oh, Keeper, yeah. Oh, keeper? Oh, yeah. You know, I don't know that a writer can ever answer that question adequately because when they're creating,

[00:10:45] they probably know exactly why they choose that. And as time goes on, it takes on additional meaning. I tell my students that whatever the writer thought they were saying doesn't really matter because 10 minutes after they thought they said it, their mind has changed, their life has

[00:11:04] changed, their identity has changed. So the words don't mean quite what they did at the time that they said it or wrote it. And I think that's the case with anything. Used to, I really like that because it is just by itself, it has double meaning.

[00:11:20] You can talk about things that you are used to. Things that are familiar and that certainly plays a role in the poems and photos that we have in this book. But it's also, this is how things used to be.

[00:11:33] So it has a double meaning right off and both of those meanings work very well with what we have going on in this book and in these poems.

[00:11:39] And if you went through it, I couldn't tell you now without going back and looking but I know the phrase used to is used at least three or four times in poems in the book. And usually either at the very beginning or the very end of the poem.

[00:11:55] There's one poem called Use of the Time. Yes, I like that poem a lot. Yeah, it reminds me of one of my favorite pieces of work in here. It's a poem called Thinking About The Next Big Bang and the Galaxy at the Edge of Town.

[00:12:10] Yeah, and then there's one in here about the street names and things like that. Is it lost in here? Yes, that's the one. And that's where I kind of applied that idea of Use to because that's how we give directions around here. Yeah.

[00:12:26] You say you have to go down here where O'Hoto's story used to be and turn left by the tree that used to be there that was struck by lightning in 1951. I am.

[00:12:37] Well, that's how you can tell how long somebody's lived here because you could say go in from spring to a lunar on, well, you know where the Old tasty freezes used to be. Well, no, they didn't know that. Well, do you remember it being a ABC store?

[00:12:52] And if they don't know that, well, do you know where substation is? Yes, I mean where that is. Well, you've been here for the last five years. So it's you can't get anywhere in here with that little landmark. That's just so it is.

[00:13:03] Well, we can all relate to the street names to what they can. That's just so I'm actually the poll night with the title used to actually begins with a story that I've told over and over again. And this was true in backwood, South Carolina where I grew up.

[00:13:21] I once heard my grandfather give directions to someone saying turn left right there where so and so used to keep his go-to-do-do-do tree. And the go-to had been dead for years. The man had been dead for years on the tree.

[00:13:36] You've been knocked down in the last couple of years. So none of those things were still there, but that was how they gave directions. And in Hickory nobody gives directions with street numbers because you can't say go through

[00:13:48] the intersection of second and second and then two blocks later go through the intersection of second and second again without people thinking that you lost your mind. So that's right.

[00:13:58] And the poll I'm used to is faced with one of our famous then and now photographs from downtown Hickory. Where Joe, do you remember what photo, what the older photo was that you borrowed in this?

[00:14:14] I believe it was something I got from a Tomavall, a Tomahawk, it's your museum. I hope we did a book when we did that book with the Devil Wathickory, with a different one at the Newton, but there was some pictures of Hickory also there. Okay.

[00:14:26] Some of that got from the Patriot Brier Library also. Okay, so because what then and now photographs usually do, what Joe's students have done in the past is they they find an older photograph of some kind of architecture or something interesting in the town.

[00:14:43] We've done it in Newton in Hickory. And then they go to the place where the photograph was taken, get his close to the exact same angle as they possibly can shoot a new picture.

[00:14:54] So we've got two presentations of that particular area, the end they go into Photoshop and they merge the two together to kind of give you a then and now kind of look. And sometimes even show you what Scott was talking about how the architecture does not change

[00:15:11] over many many years. So fun part of that. Some of these places again they look familiar but this has been torn down. I like it when people are interacting with the two pictures like from the old pictures in the

[00:15:21] it is a lot of fun even to find an outward of the tire first to the time of year, the angle like the focal length. And this is a kind of exciting process and it's blended into together. There's a lot of fun too. That's a challenge but fun.

[00:15:35] And this is something that really Joe started in the original Hender River Mill Village book where Joe was taking polaroids and photographs and photographing the area that the original photograph was taken and then placing on that photograph the owner photograph and then taking a third photograph

[00:15:56] which made it look like the people who were in the photograph on the front porch were sitting on that front porch and then we decided to carry it a little further and

[00:16:05] Joe says I'll be excellent for the students to play with that so we've had so much fun with that. I don't really enjoy doing this a lot of fun. I'm a lot of seeing it in this book to give people an opportunity to see that process

[00:16:18] and understand how about doing one in Dallas, in the county I was talking to the library there and they have a pretty big archive and that might be a next one for the students to work on.

[00:16:26] Yeah we would love for Alexander County to want to do a book. Oh it's cool about what you're saying is that that type of photography shows how history persists, you know and we don't think about the past being present in the present but it always

[00:16:42] says and that's a big part of what's going on in this book in the poems and the photographs there are several poems in here about trails. This is the year of the trail has been declared as the year of the trail and of course

[00:16:57] this coincides with Hickory doing an awful lot of work on city walk and art walk in the bookwalk and all these different urban trails and it goes back to the fact that this whole area was

[00:17:11] a initially settled if you will because of an intersection of Native American trails. So from the beginning this area has been about trails and here we are now in a sense overlaying trails across the history of trails.

[00:17:25] Marvelous yes, yes the Hickory Tavern originally was set up with the railroad tracks so you've got trails of the railroad tracks there and even recently on this for this poem you've got in here called Still Joe has got a photograph of this is the back of what businesses

[00:17:43] the back of in downtown Hickory. The old Hickory brewery where they actually do the brewing. Okay there was just a post on Facebook of somebody trying to raise money to redo that advertisement and Royal Crown Colve I'm never even noticed that I were telling

[00:18:03] you told me and I had to really kind of look at it now you just like a polarized lens that helped me see it but that's something I passed every day and never noticed. Well they call them ghost

[00:18:12] what is ghost prints ghost ghost signs. Yeah they used to be very common to paint brick walls as a form of advertising and you still see it if you go into really old towns or just places that

[00:18:29] no one ever removed the painting and we have one here in Hickory and that's again ironic because the most popular thing going around in Hickory and just about any other town right now is the

[00:18:40] of the creation of murals. Well that was a commercial mural but it's still a mural. Yeah because it retains an older logo for a soft drink that most people in the area familiar with

[00:18:51] because you've got your RC color that's the Royal Crown Colve RC in a moon pie type thing and there's one on older than all road there's an old automobile plant or something that's got rambler

[00:19:04] yeah yeah on the side of it that that ghost letters are still exist in there and there's Edsel somewhere on that same thing so you've got these cars that aren't manufactured anymore but

[00:19:15] there's their logos so the past is present at the same time so when you spot an intriguing image how long does it take you or how complicated is your process to capture that image as you

[00:19:35] imagine it and what makes me think of that is the image of the the looking down on the picture of tea and the interesting composure composition of that photograph and the bubbles in the

[00:19:55] around the ice the ice is clearly not brand new ice it's been in the tea for a while. Yeah let's hope for a while right yeah how do you you just click a lot of them at once or

[00:20:08] is there is there a process you go through where you say I think it's like that for anything like even a lot of these places he gives me a location and even like that Starbick or Playground went

[00:20:17] back to several times and I just kind of re-evaluate it like the first time I might this is a picture of a picture of tea and then on this start looking for lines and shapes and somebody designed that

[00:20:29] picture like there's an artist involved with it originally and looked for something different like a different angle perspective that's why there's even a lot of there's some drum shots in the but they give people a different perspective of the places like the Buckingham cover bridge they haven't

[00:20:42] seen it that way before so a lot of times just thinking of some new way to looking at things and might be a bird's eye view or worms eye view but just trying to show something that

[00:20:51] everybody recognized but it looks different okay because even the logo of this book that is on the pre-toddling the title page the words round here are found items that spell out the title of

[00:21:09] the book they look like an R that the item looks like an O we have railings we have is that a is that like a do power a little trade alley if you walk down behind okay on electric

[00:21:24] meter of some kind or a light meter of some kind how do you do this I just when I try to look at everything I look at partially if I was going to draw something the shapes that would make

[00:21:36] about you got to look at things abstract will you if you're going to be a photographer it kind of get past that like oh this is a power box whatever try to look at what else can it be

[00:21:46] arcane it look like something else and that's kind of what got to start with this book I've shown I've got some pictures and I made a whole poster of it and I'd still do it every year

[00:21:55] it's a good challenge for them I was able to talk about this stuff and I don't like it I don't look at there's an R and it's like going to Disney World you see the hidden Mickey's everywhere

[00:22:02] I just that's a good way to see things differently they'll be in a more creative eye I think it's interesting that you know both of the creatives we have in here today

[00:22:12] you guys are both observational your art is based in Joe what you observe and then what you can change the perspective Scott your poetry and I mean in every book you've done there's observation or stuff that you you turn everyday items everyday places everyday things into oftentimes metaphor

[00:22:34] allegorical aspects this is one of the reasons why I grew up when I was a little kid and I mean before I was five we lived in Longview and the old fresh air that's what my parents called it

[00:22:53] the fresh air was where we shot and I remember as a kid being amazed at the doors that opened automatically and things like that and you've got a poem in here and now can't find it again that's the one

[00:23:09] you mentioned earlier the galaxy at the edge of town yes and of course if you're from the hickory area then you recognize that we're not talking about the galaxy as in the universe we're

[00:23:20] talking about the galaxy is in the fresh air galaxy yes but but and I'm wondering about the photograph that Joe chose or you guys chose to go home of that guys we have got to go back to

[00:23:33] mailing we gotta go back to print on this and put page numbers in it how to do authors can't find it has it's okay if I put some page number the way you can find a jar of lightning

[00:23:45] marks yeah yeah the jar of lightning but well it looks like lightning but yeah here it is it's on page no page no uh Scott how is she would read this for us I'm trying to find it now myself

[00:24:05] what's with the back of them is it that's what I thought it's on the back it's kind of in the middle okay kind of in the middle kind of any if you if you really look for the picture

[00:24:15] because my question is how does this illustration speak to this poem and uh this is one of them we kind of cheated on um that was a book cover for my book by that title I don't know how many

[00:24:32] years ago it's been okay so this I'm failing this photograph I think there it has yeah yeah okay so thinking about the next big bang in the galaxy at the age of town is the name of the poem

[00:24:46] in the name of the book from years ago and I wanted to use that play on the idea of a a grocery store being called the galaxy and um how to a child's perspective something like a

[00:24:59] grocery store could represent a galaxy that's great so in the galaxy at the edge of town there is still plenty of fresh air space is abundant light is spread evenly everywhere children keep rattling wheels moving forward the machinery of popular of produce continues seven languages are

[00:25:19] spoken a homeless man seeks shelter jacket pulled tight around him orbs of eyes concealed beneath rings of his hats brown stockboys wait for beauty to descend and need them they dream constellations in their hands spin cans to face the front potentialities polarities cosmic designer all worked out

[00:25:41] in the commerce of heavenly bodies everything moves and perpetual orbit a man walking between rose wonders at the infinity of choice spread out before him things one day decisions won't matter at closing time they walk towards the black hole of windows afraid of no gravity but their own

[00:26:02] that's just that's just marvelous that's just a wonderful word choice I just love this some uh potentialities polarities cosmic designer all worked out in the commerce of heavenly bodies yeah I'm that's great to remember when you could go into a grocery store and it was so much smaller

[00:26:24] and they would have one or two brands of the same item if you well and that was it now you go into a grocery store and it's just it seems endless it's immense and I think most people

[00:26:40] ten years younger than I am that's what they've grown to expect anything less than that is is a convenience store it's not a grocery store and I'm just amazed at how sometimes we can

[00:26:54] be dissatisfied when we have that many choices of oatmeal or peanut butter or whatever it is you want you've got all these choices presented to you now it's like we have a universe of choice

[00:27:09] every time we go out and and that's exactly the way we see the universe ever since we we've been able to see all of the galaxies and we've had Carl Sagan say to us there are billions and billions

[00:27:22] of galaxies while there's billions and millions of choices in the grocery store how many cereals can you really consume at one time how many brands of coffee is there uh and we could say

[00:27:35] this name for books you know it's like I buy books sometimes hoping that I'm buying the time to read them more than I am actually you know buying the book to actually read well speaking about the

[00:27:47] universe your poem address um I like the last one where you end it you said I can always live I can always only live in one particular place it wouldn't particularly or a time when you

[00:27:59] go through the process of creating a poem what inspires you to write that poem what inspired you to write that one in particular I always I think like everyone who spends any time in hickory you

[00:28:11] become kind of fascinated with the street names um and yes you you laugh at the street names and then everyone's on all you realize well wait a minute though I mean if you think about it

[00:28:24] that the specificity of 838 fourth not just avenue but avenue drive not just avenue drive but avenue drive northwest it's like the grid is drawn and you can pinpoint it it would could only be right

[00:28:40] here right here and there's something about that specificity that says embrace that so be there at that moment in time and and really embrace it recognize it enjoy everything that it has to offer

[00:28:59] there's a huge irony and I have to apologize to someone we put this book together before we well my father and I'll really decided that we were going to move in this poem begins I live at 838 fourth avenue drive northwest and as of today that's no longer true

[00:29:21] we closed on that house today so my apologies go out to the family that has bought this house I hope that will be the case oh my god I was somebody who's not tapping on their windows

[00:29:35] is this where to pull it yeah she could tell them that well that was true but all things change there's a I think that's interesting that speaks to like it's best specific you be there in

[00:29:51] that place but around here you can't find it yeah it's very specific you know it's 50th Avenue circle northeast but you can't find it so is there something cosmic about that that seems like

[00:30:07] half of my one way streets too so you got it make sure you look for the songs and direction the quarters are going and thank god the GPS and now on those because early GPS did not seem to pay attention

[00:30:18] to one way streets but the GPS now knows when something's a one way street where it doesn't have you going down the wrong way yeah before fortunately yeah I don't have a place car one time

[00:30:29] oh my goodness I remember when they changed um Helen Avenue used to be two way and now it's one way and the night street going towards Linnore I'm there at the days to freeze that used to be two ways

[00:30:42] too yep that the tasty freeze that's no longer there there there there there there there there used to be the ABC store but now is the substation because the ABC stores increased in size to where

[00:30:54] the ABC stores are just like the grocery stores you know how many kinds of vodka are there yeah you would think that a book being published right now would be completely up today

[00:31:07] but we were talking about the poem used to earlier and I realized just the other day let's see down here in the poem it says they're talking about old buildings and the hickory news building

[00:31:18] and this poem has been changed to beyond appearance right are you stored there it's no longer beyond appearance yet so my yelts now is right just it you know even before this book is published

[00:31:29] things are not what they used to be yes the same thing happened with the Newton then in now book yeah we spot high to a couple of businesses in the Newton then in now book that were out of business

[00:31:41] came out and moreover the day after the book came out they brought a bunch of heavy machinery down in Newton and completely changed the square around the courthouse from how it originally was

[00:31:53] the same thing kind of happened with the hickory book when we started doing the plans for yet they were tearing up downtown hickory and I think some of your folks were shooting around

[00:32:05] some of that construction and things like that down there so Melanie can you talk to us a little bit about the layout of this book and any did you run into any problems or was it a joy that

[00:32:20] did I? I had the best time with this but mainly because I was working with John I didn't get to work with Scott very often is step towards the end but um as Scott was moving because he told her

[00:32:30] body where he was yeah but it was a lot of fun to work with Joe because I started out as a photographer and so Joe and I sort of we had sort of the same language and you know but Joe is classically

[00:32:49] trained and I'm what's called gorilla photography training because I was in newspaper and I would shoot concerts and I'd be in the pit and you know that kind of thing so my stuff was not

[00:32:59] artistic like Joseph so we have two different ways of shooting I shoot emotionally but um I had a lot of fun with Joe going through you know his photographs and he could look at something and say okay

[00:33:12] that looks like that's not you know that's not clear enough or you know the sky's not blue enough or we're losing the clouds and I was trying to explain to him about when we print it's going to

[00:33:21] come out darker or I lightened it up just a little and um he went back and told his photographs warming and so we sort of got that down pat and coming up with the idea of the layout

[00:33:34] Joe and Scott pretty much had their layout in place didn't you? Oh pretty much. And so you had your own idea of the way things were looking when you start doing a layout like how do you put it together do you thumbnail it how do you

[00:33:48] I usually all of them trying to do originally is just trying to match the point with the photo I just want to on face and pages for each other so when he can look at him I can look at him

[00:33:58] um so I just usually create some kind of document where I can put on face to face and um it's nice sometimes if it would kind of work out where to same format we had to change a little bit but

[00:34:08] that's the first thing is like let him look at it they think that to respond each other and it lets me kind of know what else I need to work on not it's kind of a mess when he's got

[00:34:17] a list of poems and trying to pick out which picture goes the why it so Scott whenever you're for instance web works that that poem um and this is the picture of the spider web in the corner of

[00:34:31] the porch what inspired when you look at that photograph are you inspired by that to write a poem or what inspired you to write that poem so that Joe could match it um well

[00:34:44] that poem I love spider webs and um I love seeing them as you do in that photo particularly when they're like outlined with dude I think they're just beautiful and um of course

[00:34:57] anywhere if you live anywhere around here you're going to have seen spider webs so the poem was actually written from an actual spider web that I encountered one morning and but but Joe can go from the words

[00:35:11] to finding the perfect photograph and sometimes I would point him in a direction like my favorite photo yeah I'll say that there I have probably four or five favorites but one of my absolute favorites

[00:35:25] is the one that goes with a study of steeple oh yeah I love that photograph and um I knew that Joe had plenty of steeple photographs already um I had seen many of them

[00:35:36] but I was just driving home from the coffee shop and drove by this steeple which is first back to downtown and I think I was on third yeah I third streets yeah and I glance over my left

[00:35:48] shoulder and you could see the steeple through the lease work if you'll diswinter tree and I thought that's breathtaking so I texted Joe and said hey Joe I know you already have a photo for this but

[00:35:58] listen this is a great opportunity I think this one might really be good and Joe is great he's gone to locations where I don't know there's a great photo if you could take it because I'm terrible

[00:36:08] as photo I might see it but I can't translate it into a camera at all and so when I saw this it's like that's just perfect that's like exactly what I think should be there that's so wonderful

[00:36:22] I like the peach the peach colors in the grays and it looks like it is a winner photograph without even knowing that that's what that is and say what's beautiful about this photograph the colors

[00:36:33] are so subtle in this that you don't see them the first time you look at it they come upon you slowly almost like you know they're seeping out like this is watercolor seep and then you begin to

[00:36:47] see it and this is hard to do ladies and gentlemen out there in podcast land in a book that is printed hundreds and hundreds of miles away in a commercial fashion of mass marketing you know where the

[00:37:01] machines are running 24 hours a day seven days a week to actually get the the the the subtle intention that the photographer intends and in this case in this photograph it worked because it's there

[00:37:17] and I think that's part of the back and forth with the layout artist or the photographer talking to Melanie when you went out it's when I read every single picture from scratch and I try to match

[00:37:27] that delay your explaining it to me because I wanted to look a certain way and I think they came out really well I think they do because what we're doing folks out there who don't know how this

[00:37:36] business works is we get something called a galley proof the the actual printer will send us an example of what the book is going to look like so we have it in our hands and we're able to experience

[00:37:47] it the same way that the reader does and in doing that we're able to look and see how are their machines calibrated what are how their machines see red how do their machines see cyan

[00:37:57] how their machines see yellow and we can then go into Photoshop or some other program or you know what what what do you use jota just some light room in Photoshop oh god and we're able to

[00:38:12] change the image to make up for any loss or any inadequacy that the printer may have and in doing that we kind of go wow now we've got what we really want you kind of have to exaggerate

[00:38:27] some of this stuff or make it a little more contrasty than normally because of the way the printers are set up and no two printers are alike say we could print that book on three different printers

[00:38:37] and it would look different because the book being a mass produced book it's not one of these expensive you know hundred and fifty dollar hard cover it's not enough yeah where it is where it is printed

[00:38:50] and it's watched and it's perfect and all the see him why k is measured and and the machine that it's on they use a denser tomator on a daily basis to be able to to check the cover these are

[00:39:03] machines that are just put through the ringer and they're rarely ever stopped for maintenance or calibration and they say how is it better has something that's affordable that the general public can get

[00:39:15] yeah and and and at thirty thirty five dollars is what this book runs and again you can use our coupon of fall twenty three on redhawk publications dot com to pre-order the book will be here

[00:39:31] sometime about a week or so after this podcast drops um you would pay that much for a single print oh yeah for sure oh my god now I've got the chance to buy a book with what 60 wonderful

[00:39:46] photos absolutely like this one they're looking for feta's in the night sky and that's that's one of my favorites and that one too the one that I described that to the listeners what what is that

[00:39:57] image what does that image see if you know and I'll tell you what it is no no snow I started out I started your on campus oh really there's snow rain nope nope I give up that's a part-time lot of the double exposure that's the part-time exposure okay

[00:40:15] so that's the trees and it's the parking lot anyway okay it looks like it looks like snow or stuff oh okay now see the asphalt yeah and there is a marvelous portrait of the mule

[00:40:27] that's in this book when it's just beautiful it's an eight and a half mile 11 photograph of mule there is there's like Melanie you just do like one full bleed section in the book that there's three stars straight and with less third Avenue yeah for the poem about the

[00:40:43] the the longest poem in the book is the why so many of those who are lost in history stay that way forever yeah and Melanie had to bump the photograph over so she decided to do a full

[00:40:56] bleeds spread on the on the thing which which had its own challenges with our printers one and I love how you did the the layout for the ontology of rivers as well oh thank you

[00:41:07] with the the photograph that's the gorgeous photograph yeah is that one it leads into the into the gutter and there's onto the other page it's got this the full half the top half is

[00:41:16] a full bleed it can make sense of how rivers just go on forever we can sit here there's also a beautiful portrait of are these are these daisies I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm blackout Susan's

[00:41:30] one more these shot Jo and you remember so very hard square over hard square okay so instead of us sitting here just you know describing them to you why don't you go to redhought publications dot

[00:41:42] com and by your copy of your own and I will ship it to you as soon as it gets here oh there's the one that yeah with the foggers yeah also drawn to I love to draw the side of river and see

[00:41:56] in that fog with the so the drone the the advent of the drone has really given photography a brand new realm of perspective that it didn't have before yeah several pictures that again like the bunker hill I'm like I've seen this thing picture like I want something different

[00:42:13] so how did you shoot something like that before you have to go in an airplane or yeah I said they're going to plane our helicopter I didn't quite a bit of that too and it was

[00:42:22] a lot trickier because you know you're moving we have a lot of things up at the coffee shop right now that I'm guessing is probably a drone shop it's it's shot it's a considerably high aerial view

[00:42:36] of the bunker hill bridge you know you know really like it looks very abstract it looks like almost like spider webs do you don't know what you're looking at I mean you have to

[00:42:46] look at it figure out what it is otherwise it does just look like an abstraction and it's fascinating so that's that's what makes photography art right there that's what brings the art to photography

[00:42:58] is when you look at it and then you realize the brilliance behind that image and what it is taken to bring that image to life well I'm going to add to that because you you've all talked

[00:43:08] about perspective you've talked about color and I want you to look at the one that goes to the poem Penwheel there are you would think since I wrote most of these poems that I would be immune to

[00:43:19] the emotional element but every time I read the poem Penwheel I'll cry and I know it's because of the photograph and he found just the perfect I think how many times did you go to take

[00:43:32] that photo probably one or three times yeah before I could about how many times I get what I felt I needed he would send me a shot and I was like wow it's nice but it's not quite right

[00:43:42] and then he would go back it was willing to go back and try again and he finally got this perfect perspective looking up through the the wheels if you will of the penwheel

[00:43:53] to the blue sky and the clouds above that to me just convey the feeling that the poem and the whole story of Zara Baker kind of conveys I probably did take a hundred of that when I tried every angle around

[00:44:06] that sculpture if you look at the colors that he captured in the sculpture itself I mean most of us think of it that was the metal sculpture is it brushed is it a brushed metal it looks like it's

[00:44:17] brushed metal I don't think it is it might be that almost it is reflections of clouds and other things I know I know one thing that Joe is indifatible he will he will work and work

[00:44:32] and work until something is as good as it can be and if his students get two thirds your indifatibility they're very lucky because you have to be patient to make art not an ace syllable word I'm not sure you can leave the details on it

[00:44:53] now I think friend of John works hard don't admit as getting a book published I had to think red hog like they made that like that that dream come true as I can always and I'm bringing

[00:45:03] to students and to that also to give them that opportunity was incredible to build a do that well that's what we are here for is to nurture art to market to bring art out that

[00:45:15] otherwise might get buried in the need to make money and be capitalist but we love to sell books so please visit redhawk publications.com and order some books from us will send them right

[00:45:30] to you when when when we can I was going to say two I think we just got our plan on having some these book these pictures on display in this coffee shop yeah we have a book launch scheduled

[00:45:40] as part of poetry hickory on December 12 we always started 615 and Joe and I will have the first 20 minutes or shares some poems and yeah I would love to have as many of the photos

[00:45:54] there is also 60 of them and I'll do it and I'm gonna have some prints for sale I'm gonna have some prints on one of these good so if you want to own a piece of art that is in a book and you

[00:46:07] want to own the book tasteful beans coffee shop on December 12 starting country at 615 we will have this information up on our website you can check it and tasteful beans website as well because

[00:46:21] tasteful beans is kind of like the unofficial sponsor of red pub pod because we talk about tasteful beans and every podcast we've done because if you want to see our books in person tasteful

[00:46:34] beans is the home of those books right out there on the shelf where you can go take a look at a few of them and if Scott doesn't have one Scott I'm getting for you I think what's nice too that's how

[00:46:45] me it's got originally met it was actually a previous owner and I had some pictures on this plan ago and here's a poem attached in the footer out was that the jelope or the pelicans

[00:46:55] pelicans yeah that's like this is really cool and we were started working with our students also like it was funny when he would give me poems I give him a picture to get a sentence pictures

[00:47:05] and they had to write a poem based off the picture to this go back and forth that was pretty fun to do that to you but I'd like it all started there also well the book is called round here

[00:47:14] images from a near katama county I'd like to thank Scott Owens and Clayton Jo Young for joining us today thank you very much Melonie Zimmerman for joining me today when our other two colleagues are

[00:47:26] out doing important things in the community my name is Robert can I but I want to appreciate you guys for listening to us so everybody needs to say red bub pod red bub pod that was excellent

[00:47:41] joke for the first time so thank you very very much I hope that we hear from you again about guest about the for-man-homte applications