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February 23, 2009
Ocracoke Up Close: A visiting photographer creates
a stunning visual portrait of the island By SUNDAE HORN
 Some people look at an old, neglected skiff in a yard, and they see an eyesore. Some people see a welcome reminder that Ocracoke is still a quaint fishing village. Photographer George Brown sees the perfect subject for a work of abstract art. “Rust is phenomenal,” he says. In a series of recent photographs, George features close-up shots of the old hull of a once-blue boat, turning its streaks of rust and many layers of peeling paint into something much different and beautiful, and something you wouldn’t notice with the naked eye. Unless, of course, you see things like George does. “I look for color, shape, and texture,” he says. “And I photograph things quite close. Now I’m working on seeing the subtleties of light better.” On Ocracoke, where George and his wife, Reggie Mosser, are spending the winter, he’s found ample opportunity to explore light – sparkling on water, dappling through tree branches, or glowing in the mist. George goes out to shoot photos every day and finds subject matter on the island as varied as “scenic postcard” views at the beach to the knots on old trees to rotting bits of rope. He posts one picture a day on his photo blog, www.pixadilly.com, and has been using photos from Ocracoke since he arrived here in early December. Many photos have names as intriguing as their subject matter. A pile of corroding pennies is called “Stimulus” and pound nets are “Self-Sufficiency.” When deciding what to put on his blog, he looks through his catalog of photos and chooses a week’s worth at a time, scheduling ahead of time the order in which they’ll appear. “I find ones that I like, that I think have something interesting to draw you into the photograph,” he says. “Sometimes I notice thematic things that pop out, and I choose photos around a theme, other times I just try to vary it from abstract to scenic, and from vertical to horizontal.” After the Presidential Inauguration, George was inspired to post a series of photos that he named for things that reminded him of Barack Obama. In that series are the photos “Hope,” “Serenity,” and “Wisdom,” along with the stimulus pennies. On Ocracoke, he’s taken a series of photos of old wood and says that’s an upcoming theme he’s planning to post. “The theme leads to the names,” he says. “When I post them, I try to come up with interesting names that describe a concept or emotion. I also try to be witty, and when I fail at that, sometimes I just number them.” George has only been taking pictures for about two years. He and Reggie weren’t the type to take snapshots, and when they traveled, they preferred to leave everything to memory. But in January, 2007, a visiting friend got George interested in photography, inspiring him to take a four-session course in beginning photography at a community college near his home in Florida. George’s first photos were of old metal in a local industrial area. “There were rusty old rollers and metal rods – all these colors and geometries,” he says happily. His teacher was very encouraging, which led George to take classes at the Crealde School of Art in Winter Park, Fla., where he enrolls whenever he can. “If you get feedback that says you’re good,” he says, “then you get better.” To help him get better, he bought a better camera. It’s a Nikon D80, which, he says, is a good amateur camera. Photography has now become “a hobby and a passion” for him, and he’s always striving to improve. “I’m not experienced enough yet to predict how a photo will turn out,” he says. “There’s a difference between seeing what I want to photograph and being able to make the photo come out the way I want. That’s the challenge for me.” He expects the challenge to continue. “I’m better at seeing than making the camera do what I want, but some people work a lifetime and never control the camera.” George is originally from upstate New York. When he and Reggie retired (he from family therapy and social work, she from oncology nursing), they moved to Florida, just outside Orlando. They spend a lot of time on the road, traveling as much as possible “while we’re still young enough to enjoy it” says Reggie. It was in some of their travels in the Caribbean that they met Bill and Leslie Monticone from Ocracoke. They hit it off so well that the Monticones insisted that George and Reggie needed to see Ocracoke. Last June, they visited the island for two nights and found it “very welcoming and warm.” “We like small towns and Ocracoke looked like a really great place, if it weren’t so busy,” Reggie said. A winter visit seemed ideal, and they found a lovely cottage on the marsh to rent for four months. They’ve enjoyed getting to know the Ocracoke community during the off-season and have already reserved the same place for next winter. FOR MORE PHOTOGRAPHS To see more of George Brown’s Ocracoke photographs, go to his photo blog at http://www.pixadilly.com. You can look at all of the photos he has taken on Ocracoke and posted since early December and his other photos. He posts a new Ocracoke photo each day. CLICK HERE TO VIEW SLIDE SHOW |
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