So, as I stated on a previous blog post, I am shooting black and white images in a square format. It is bringing me back to my early days of photography using a Rolleiflex camera. It also reminds me of work by photographers I greatly admired and who lived mainly in the middle of the last century. One of them was Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Now, I am not going to give you a bio of the man and photographer, there is plenty of information on the web if you are curious. But I will say that the man had a unique sense of humor.

While photographing in my New Jersey neighborhood and on the look out for a “Halloween picture” I came across the scene above. In color it was obviously fake and rather gaudy but I decided to look through my camera. And in black and white I was surprised at how the gaudiness was transformed. If you take a quick look it almost looks real , especially the foot. Then it hit me, this is exactly the type of photo Ralph Eugene Meatyard would get a kick out of.

So for you, Ralph, Happy Halloween!