burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Back in my youth, 1968 or so, my bathroom window faced the sunrise. One morning after a hot shower fogged over the window, I snapped a Black-and-White (Tri-X) negative of the sun behind the intersection of two of the wood pieces holding panes of glass in place.

This is a derivation from that image. It is the merge of color style from a senior portrait of one of my twins against a graffiti wall.

(Download)

UTMike Loc: South Jordan, UT

Very creative, Bill!

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Thanks, Mike!

UncleBuck Loc: Malvern, Arkansas

Interesting, Nicely Done !!!

dpullum Loc: Tampa Florida

I remember that pseudo-stained glass stick on plastic... it was very popular. Your image is churchy but not in a church.
Your "youth" memory tells us a story simply but effectively told Burk.

Linda From Maine Loc: Yakima, Washington

Gorgeous! Super-cool result and backstory.

jaymatt Loc: Alexandria, Indiana

Interesting!

NJFrank Loc: New Jersey

I get the feeling you were partaking in the 60’s drug culture. 🤔 in any case I like it.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Hopefully this looks more organic than plastic. The original image WAS composed a little like the center of the giant wood cross in the church I attended back then. The church architect had backlit the cross in a similar manner (but also front-lit it). It probably gave me a bit of subconscious inspiration for the image. However, I was in a bathroom at daybreak on a school morning when I photographed the fogged window. I probably had some girl or too much homework on my mind to be thinking about any religious symbolism.

Here's the B&W version.

(Download)

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

That would be projection... It WAS 1968 or '69, but drugs hadn't appeared on the social scene in any significant way at my lily-white WASP, upper middle class neighborhood, upstate South Carolina high school. They may have been around in other parts of town, but we didn't see them.

We lived in "Richard Nixon and Strom Thurmond country." Guys were still wearing button-down shirts and pleated pants with cuffs, with dress shoes. Girls were in skirts cut to or below the knee. They wore hose, and modest blouses. It was all very 1950s, with a very preppie dress code. Greenville, SC, was the textile center of the world, and people on our side of town wore the stuff made on the other side of the town. People didn't dare question the status quo or step out of line. Blue jeans? People in the mill village wore them.

That drug culture thing would arrive in full force about two years later. All hell broke loose in 1971! That's when all the social consciousness movements of the '60s converged on sleepy little Southern towns like ours. Suddenly, liberal Presbyterians and conservative Baptists were at each others' throats (The Baptists were burning the books the Presbyterians were reading!). The schools were integrated, and dress codes went out the window. We had (parent instigated) race riots, and the anti-war protests heated up. Chemistry and physics teachers started explaining the math behind global warming. Woodstock, the Movie, showed at a local drive-in theater, where people openly "burned rope" at the first few showings. The theater brought in off-duty police...

I covered it all for my high school paper and yearbook.

NJFrank Loc: New Jersey

Your description certainly should does sound like the town was in a 1950’s time warp. Once it crossed the line there was no going back. I grew up in NJ and went to college in NM. Neither place do I recall being in that 50’s time warp. Both were fully engaged in what was going on in the 60’s. For better or worse.

StanMac Loc: Tennessee

Your color version is a nice image, Bill, but your original stands alone as an excellent, abstract image, IMO.

Stan

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Yep. My sister went to Smith College in Northhampton, MA. There were anti-war protesters at her college graduation in 1967! That Spring, we were still living in Greensboro, NC, where a lot of the civil rights activities happened in the early 1960s. Imagine our shock when we moved to Greenville in August of '67. It was like going back 100 years into the Deep South, culturally.

I'd seen hippies on the streets of NYC in 1969 during a visit there. Other than the guy tripping on acid who tried to beat up a VW beetle in front of our cab, they seemed harmless. The yippies were a rowdy radical group, though. We steered clear of their anti-war rally.

The counter-culture movements of the '60s were all over the TV and radio news, and in LIFE and TIME magazines. Yet somehow, Greenville was naive, until it wasn't. WASP parents still wanted that naïveté for their kids, and the race to build private schools was on...

magnetoman Loc: Purbeck, Dorset, UK

Works well!

MrMophoto Loc: Rhode Island "The biggest little"

Very cool image, it just shows how technology can really ad to the human creativity