Claudia Curici Photography
Exploring my passion for photography
The many colors of Houston’s spring
Texas spring was incredibly generous with me so far; these are few of the beauties that filled my heart with joy when in Houston a week ago. Thank you my little Fujifilm x100S for being such an awesome camera, in any situation 🙂
Marfa. How a road trip became a soul trip.
I don’t remember when I first heard about Marfa. But I know for sure it was some time before I moved to Texas. My brain just stored a blurred memory of Marfa mystery lights seen on some travel channel, mixed with some Instagram pictures of Beyonce, mixed with something I read about it being an art town in the middle of nowhere in Texas. I just know the place was already marked on my imaginary map of places I have to see. Little did I know how life changing this (back then) future experience will be.
Traveling to Marfa is not the easiest thing to plan. The town is 500 miles away from Dallas, and 600 miles away from Houston, and accessible only by car. It was quite naive of me to imagine Marfa has a small airport :). Also, Marfa doesn’t have many hotels, and one month previous to the trip the only decent hotel was fully booked. A Marfa road trip is not something you do alone, especially when you are new to the country and have no idea what to expect and finding a travel companion is not an easy task either. So everything falling into place so easily, makes me think the stars were perfectly aligned to create some serendipity and throw some magic dust our way.
I met Elena (my travel companion) when I was still in Dubai, on Instagram, while both discovered our common interest and love for “La Blouse Roumaine” – a project meant to reveal and promote the beauty of the traditional romanian blouse (‘ie’ in Romanian). And yes, we are both Romanians, living in Texas, but since neither of us chooses our respective friends based on nationality (rather based on common interests and personality), this was just a detail adding more meaning to the beauty of our future exchanges and adventures.
Before me and Elena met in real life (the day she came to Dallas to pick me up on the way to Marfa), we were just Instagram and Facebook friends, and I was a fan of her novels (she is a writer, a painter and a college professor, which was fascinating to me). I have to admit, I was a bit nervous – let’s face it, there was a small chance we won’t get along – but my trusted friend – my intuition – didn’t fail me. I have to make a special mention here, of Holly – the Boston terrier, Elena’s dog who, with her easy going and friendly nature, might have helped a little bit with the bonding.
The rest is just a beautiful memory. About 1,500 miles driving across Texas, magical sunsets, bunny rabbits, road runners and tumbleweed crossing our paths, flocks of hawks floating in the sky, the mystery of Marfa lights and the starriest sky I have even seen; the gentle man missing two fingers who helped us in the town of Valentine, when we ran out of gas on our way to see the Prada museum, an art installation on the side of the road, in the middle of nowhere; the group of American tourists talking about how Romania was one of the most beautiful places they have ever visited, a beautiful couple from Chicago joining us for a conversation about travel in a coffee shop with a Swiss owner; a double stack train transporting containers from Los Angeles to Houston and passing throughout the middle of the town; a charming hotel where James Dean and Elisabeth Taylor stayed when filming Giant; but most of all, the light… to me, Marfa, the small quirky town in the middle of the Chihuahuan desert, is a place shaped by light and shadows, playing, revealing and hiding, tricking our poor eyes, teaming up with dust and wind, making us squint, almost blindingly following the empty streets and the strait lines of buildings in pursuit of some sort of mirage, or magical discovery.
Marfa is not a place, Marfa is a state of mind, is freedom, is soul searching, is possibility, is infinite light and space. Marfa came into our lives bearing precious gifts: friendship, inspiration, harmony and most of all, the taste of freedom, the courage to trust our intuition and follow our hearts. One of my favorite quotes about travel is Henry Miller’s “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”
We do see things in a different light post our trip, and we can’t wait to put together our first joint project, a coffee table book with photography and thoughts from our soul trip to Marfa.
Cheers to new ways of seeing things! ❤
More about our trip on Elena’s blog: Have Watercolors Will Travel
A dream of bluebonnets
“Long gone like bluebonnets in the spring
We’re only here for a little while
It’s beautiful and bittersweet
So make the most of every mile
So pack light and love heavy
Give it all your heart and soul, so in the end
You won’t regret one thing
Life is like bluebonnets in the spring.”(Aaron Watson – Bluebonnets)
An overcast day in Dallas
After living in the desert for seven years, one learns to love rain. ❤
Later edit: The first three shots of rain drops are my entry for Harmony – WordPress weekly photo challenge.
The joy of spring. Dallas Arboretum.
“The sun just touched the morning;
The morning, happy thing,
Supposed that he had come to dwell,
And life would be all spring.”
E. Dickinson
Yesterday I woke up to an overcast sky, and I decided it was a perfect day to go to Dallas Arboretum to see (and photograph) the spring flowers. Well, by the time I arrived, the sun was gloriously shining and there was no trace of clouds in the sky. Although the day was beautiful, not the best conditions for flower photography, so I was slightly disappointed, I almost didn’t want to post the pictures. But this morning I thought that even though the photos I made are not perfect, one can still admire the beauty (and quite frankly, the Miracle…) of spring.
Love light. Follow your dream.
“Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography.” – George Eastman
There is no better feeling than to look back and know you’ve taken a good decision. That you are one step closer to your dream thanks to that enlightened moment when you made a choice. Well, that’s exactly how I feel about the decision to take a studio lighting workshop (instead of signing up for a photography conference). Not only I learned from a great photographer – Steven Visneau – but I met wonderful people who inspire me to follow my dream.
Steven Visneau (Photographer)
Jessica (Model)
Patrizia Montanari (Photographer)
Forrest (Model)
Dillon (Model)
Emiro (Photographer)
140 years of Brancusi
If you are familiar with the modern art, you are probably familiar with who Constantin Brancusi is. Today he is mainly presented, on the international art scene, as French, but Brancusi was born and studied art in Romania. He was born in a family of Romanian peasants, in a village next to my hometown, Targu-Jiu. He left Romania at the age of 27 (1903) and travelled to Munich and then to Paris on foot. After he assisted Rodin for one month, he decided to leave the famous sculptor’s atelier because, as he said, “nothing grows in the shadow of great trees”. He started to develop what some call “abstract art”, term which he didn’t like.
“Some idiots call my work abstract, in spite of the fact that what they call abstract is actually the most real of all — not the outer appearance, but the concept or essence of things” – Constantin Brancusi.
In the context of today’s art scene, is hard to believe he had to fight all his life to prove his work is “real art”. In 1926, when he sent his sculpture “Bird in Space” for an exhibition in New York, his artwork was not recognized as “art” because it had nothing to do with a bird, as the name suggested… it was not a good enough imitation of a real bird, therefore it cannot be qualified as art. US officials classified Bird in Space as (drum rolls….) “kitchen utensils and hospital supplies”. Brancusi, who started a court case to defend his Bird against the state, won the battle, a moment that is considered a milestone in the evolution of modern art.
In 1935, Brancusi receives a commission to create The Sculptural Ensemble Constantin Brancusi in Targu-Jiu, in memoriam of WWI heroes. He completes the monuments in 1938 and refuses to take money for it (proves to be the only gift he could give Romania and be appreciated).
His battle against ignorance continued. In 1951, when Brancusi decided to donate all his artworks to the Romanian state, his donation was refused and his artwork classified as simple carved objects that any peasants in Romania can do. Also, they said his work would not be contributing in any way to the building of socialism in Romania! So the only way to protect his work was to give up his Romanian citizenship and apply for French citizenship, which he receives one year later.
In 1955, when he felt his end is near, he asked the Romanian state to approve his repatriation, and of course, they refused again. With no other choice left, he donated his entire art to the French State.
Hard to believe, but incompetence in dealing with Brancusi legacy lasts to this day in Romania. Only last year, UNESCO rejected Romania’s application for the Sculptural Ensemble of Constantin Brancusi in Targu-Jiu – not because the work doesn’t deserve to be on the World Heritage Site list, but because the application was so poorly compiled and presented, it just didn’t make a strong case (as I have a very good idea about the people in charge with such projects, I can easily imagine how that application must have looked like).
Anyway, some progress has been made, and starting this year, 19th of February is declared a national day, “Brancusi Day”. Hopefully the awareness about the importance of Brancusi’s legacy will raise and more good things will follow.
Below are the monuments that are part of the Sculptural Ensemble in Targu-Jiu (my hometown).
The Table of Silence (Masa Tacerii)
The Gate of Kiss (Poarta Sarutului)
The Endless column (Coloana Infinitului)
Meaningful connections
I love public art and how people interact with it; something I missed while living in Dubai, but fortunately I have plenty of here in the US. This week’s WordPress challenge is Life imitates art, but I take the liberty to break the rules with these two depictions of life that gives life to art by creating a meaningful connections. First photo is made in Dallas, Pioneers Plaza, the second in McKinney, Historical Downtown (Texas).
Where Texas meets Oklahoma
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
― Marcel Proust
Lake Texoma, Eisenhower State Park
Before and after
Ok, this is a first for me. When Stacy from Visual Venturing announced the February One Photo Focus feature, I was intrigued. Normally, this is an image I would not try to process, but this is exactly what made me want to try and see what can be done. I think I am slightly touched by OCD, so from the start the perspective would discourage me, but the Lens Correction feature in Lightroom does wonders.
I will not explain the entire process here, but basically perspective, highlights and shadows were the main problems that needed to be fixed. I won’t say my edited versions are perfect, but there is a certain mood the image conveys, I loooovee the details of the boat against the moody sky and the city, plus there is a little man up there on the mast (I think that’s how it’s called) who gives a great perspective on how big this sailboat is. Definitely something I wouldn’t be ashamed to share on Instagram. The versions I sent Stacy had some vintage frames added in Snapseed, but I would just add the clean ones here, the way I exported them from Lightroom.
If you want to see the other edited versions please check the link at the beginning of my blog. Also, here is the edit of the photographer, Stacey from Lens Addiction.
Below the two edited images (one slightly warm, the other in a colder tone), and the original RAW image.
AFTER 1
AFTER 2
BEFORE – February One Photo Focus, Photo By Stacey @lensaddicion
Claudia Curici Photography 