Rincon Images: Recently Added Galleries and Collections

Wedding

toddmcldavis@hotmail.com (Rincon Images) — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 23:52:53 GMT

Your Wedding Photographs

When you think of your wedding you are not thinking first and foremost about the long list of details that go into making the event what you want it to be. What you and your partner are thinking about is the moment that is filled with tenderness, family…and romance.

We strive to anticipate and capture situations that convey those special feelings. When the day is over, your memories will be enhanced through the photographs of the two of you, of the small touches and of family and friends. Through your wedding photographs you will be able to step outside of your wedding and see it in its varied forms. You will have a resource that you and your partner will be able to look back at, as a source of remembering. That is what this is all about.

Being Rincon (People and Events)

toddmcldavis@hotmail.com (Rincon Images) — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 18:55:57 GMT

This gallery Being Rincon celebrates the Rincon way of life. For a small community we have our share of characters and events. I have been fortunate enough to have been asked to photograph a sampling of the parties, birthdays and some just hanging out that goes on here.

Reflected Landscape

toddmcldavis@hotmail.com (Rincon Images) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 12:29:49 GMT

The Reflected Landscape

The tropical landscape is lush, bright and heavy with color and fantastic shapes crowded with untold varieties of life. For those of us who live in such a place and even for visitors, the landscape can become like a constant companion. Indeed, it can become almost intrusive... transforming us, and our worldview in ways both bold and subtle. The cloud forms are never the same; the sea can be rough or tranquil but never exactly in the same state. Can a palm tree have an identical twin? Like the vines of this green island the tendrils of the landscape can wrap themselves around your heart.

So what of the irony, a collection of black and white grayscale images of this most lush complex and colorful place? When the landscape is pared down to its essentials, what is left is reflected light. This light is what gives us the tones of bright and dark that grade from blinding white through the smooth shades of deepening gray to the darkest of blacks. With the landscape rendered in shades of gray we see anew the shapes and patterns of our world. When we see the tones of light and dark and the contrast between them, we have an opportunity to step back and reflect on our home and our place in the world.

Several years ago I would not have attempted this series of images. I did not have a trained eye with which to see the tonalities and certainly would not have been able to capture and represent the details in the shadows and the subtle shades of gray that you see in many of these photographs. My hope is that you will feel present in these images, as I was when the photographs were made and that you will see the landscape as I do.

The photographs in this collection were made over the past three years in and around Rincon, Puerto Rico. In fact, the images of Anasco Bay were made within steps of my home by the sea. The images, except the two infra red panoramas, were hand printed and all of the photographs were optimized for print. The images were chosen because they seemed to me to reflect iconic scenes from this coastal municipality. The elemental nature of the sky and the sea are especially potent for me in the views of Anasco Bay. The vegetation, with its exotic forms is especially abundant here even commonplace. We see our extravagant flowers and towering trees literally when we step out of doors. The structures, the pilings, the lighthouse and the abandoned yola speak to me of the works of man... and their fate.

Portraits

toddmcldavis@hotmail.com (Rincon Images) — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 20:08:17 GMT

Portraits can help you and your partner remember your time away. We specialize in unique, relaxed, images of inner character. Some guests will request a special portrait as a gift for a loved one.

El Convento

toddmcldavis@hotmail.com (Rincon Images) — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 22:16:10 GMT

El Convento

Available as a photobook.

These photographs grew coincidentally from a larger project dealing with the colors, light and shadows of Old San Juan. I found that when coming and going from my base at El Convento I would make photographs of the hotel itself. After the completion of the San Juan work, I discovered that some of the images worked well as pieces of digital art in the manner of Italian Frescos. These so well complemented my vision of this elegant hotel that I put together this collection using these images throughout.

It was not my goal to shoot "architectural" or commercial photographs. Rather these photographs are intended to create a mood and to express visually some of what only can be felt.

These images were made over a six month period during the summer and late fall of 2008. They were made with Leica equipment, either the M8 or the D Lux-3 pocket camera. Many of the photographs were manipulated with Photoshop to achieve a painterly look.

Looking at this collection, I am surprised that so many of the images were made at night or in low light. Perhaps this is because the hotel appears especially lovely in the softer light.

Underwater

toddmcldavis@hotmail.com (Rincon Images) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 23:02:47 GMT

Some of these photographs were made using a wide angle lens and strobe. It is as if the reef is well aware of you. Aware in a larger sense. Try to pursue and it will flee. Slow down, control your breathing and bubbles, become just another slow moving, inoffensive (albeit large) fish and you have a chance at capturing some of the reefs variety

Unseen San Juan

toddmcldavis@hotmail.com (Rincon Images) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 13:08:00 GMT

Unseen San Juan

Available as a photobook.

It started with color. The colors of old San Juan are brilliant, and deeply saturated. There are the blues, of course, the sky, the sea, and the old paving stones brought over as ballast on the sailing ships of the empire. These are the foundation colors. Then the buildings, displaying the yellows and reds, serve to complement the blues and provide accents. These colors are not static, in truth, they are magical. As the day pushes forward from the muted dawn to the brilliant hot white light of the midday through to the oranges and pinks of dusk, the colors change. They change from soft, to hard edged and harsh and then glowing and enveloping. At night, and at dawn and dusk, the shadows of forms and the glow of street lamps impress themselves on the viewer, radically changing the city.

This series could have been all about the light and yet, from the light one begins to see that the forms of the old city compose themselves into geometries that are fantastic, with the colors as brilliant accents. The narrow medieval streets, the plazas with their commemorative sculptures and monuments, the roof lines, the windows and balconies… all arrange themselves into unlikely forms and then as one moves past, they begin to show a new composition… a novel and disorienting effect of shifting lines, curves, forms and patterns.

Of course, the city is not really about colors or shadows or geometries. It is about the people who live there and who have built and maintain the smaller touchstones of the place - the mosaics, the street signs, even the graffiti. The city, by definition, must also be about the human condition.

Cliché. Old San Juan must be one of the most photographed seven-square block areas on the face of the planet. Every day thousands of people fresh off the cruise ships and armed with cameras, take pictures of the old city. Pictures to remember places, events and people. Pictures to celebrate. In nearly every shop there are professionally produced photographs of the city and its buildings and monuments. Is there room for another collection of photographs of this city? If so, it must be because of the vision- color and form, shadows and light, and the human condition of Old San Juan.

Natures Abstractions

toddmcldavis@hotmail.com (Rincon Images) — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 19:57:00 GMT

Sea of Memories

toddmcldavis@hotmail.com (Rincon Images) — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 19:51:00 GMT

Sea of Memory, Sea of Dreams

This collection of photographs is about the sea, as it exists in our minds not our eyes. It is the seaside of our childhood and of our hopes. It is the seaside we wish for and which exists in our dreams. These are visions of a half remembered dream that if we close our eyes we can just imagine.

As a child I recall going to the seashore in the summer at a now distant place. I can recall the chill of the water and the power of the waves as they rolled up against the breakers. I can feel the heat of the sand and the see the harsh bright light of the sun… and the seeming eternity of time that as only a child knows will never end. Later as an adult I enjoyed the pleasures of the deserted winter beach and seeing my own children building sand castles, wide eyed at their first site of an ocean wave. Now here in Puerto Rico I am privileged to live by the sea and to have had the opportunity to work with the sea as a Captain and diving instructor. I have come to know the sea in a different guise. At dawn I have awakened with the sun and in the evening and night seen the sun slip below the horizon. I have felt the power of the sea and fully understand that it was not I who was in control. Buckminster Fuller has told us that, “The water is not the wave. The water merely tells us of the passing of the wave.” Our transient material world can occasionally hint to us of a usually hidden reality, which lies just out of sight and beneath the surface.

These photographs were made at various times throughout the past year (2007-2008) in and around Rincon, Puerto Rico. This small, mostly rural, municipality is the most western spot in all of Puerto Rico. It is a town that has a laid back attitude and a welcoming smile. During the winter when the storms up north make the waves that caused the Beach Boys to put Rincon on the surfing safari the town is filled with tourists and the nightlife is hopping. During the summer the crowds thin out but families who live on the Isla bring life to the town when they make their annual home coming pilgrimage to the seashore. Then, the spring and fall shoulders… the town gets sleepy, quieter, resting for the next season.

This collection evolved over time. Because I have particular associations with the seaside I naturally gravitated to making photographs of the sea. For me the seaside that I saw was not the seaside that I felt or imagined but these photographs, illusions all, come closer to a truth for me. I hope that you will be touched by some piece of this greater reality.