I’m in San Francisco, escaping the final, swampy blast of Florida’s autumnal heat. I am also taking a break from my regular commentaries, since writing about the fakery and folly propping up the stock market and the economy was getting to be a grind. Instead, I’ve featured paintings by friends, most recently Geoffrey Leckie and Deborah Oropallo. The photograph above was taken by Victor Riess, whom I met two decades ago in Colorado when he took my trading course. An avid bicyclist and musician, Victor is also the best photographer I know. He took the picture near his home in Lancaster, PA. It is one of my favorite photographs by him, a modest masterpiece that deserves, like so much of his work, to be hanging in a gallery or museum. The striking composition is miraculous, since he was riding a bicycle at the time, holding a small camera with one hand while snapping the photo. [If you’ve missed my commentaries, click here for my latest rant at This Week in Money.]
You know how, sometimes, you look at a painting and say, “Wow! that looks so real, it looks like a photograph!”? This one struck me in that, if you hadn’t told me it was a photograph, Rick, I would’ve swore it was a painting. Everything is perfectly in place and with a just-right balance of colors, its almost too good to be real! My compliments to Mr. Victor Riess!