Rod Serling not only created “The Twilight Zone” as a television series but he wrote many of the scripts and directed most of the episodes. Those of us who watched television in the early 1960’s can probably still see a dramatically lit Rod introducing each show always ending with the announcement that we were about to travel – at least metaphorically.

"You are about to take a journey. A journey not only into the dimensions of sight and sound, but of mind. A journey where the boundaries of imagination are expanded into the infinite. There is a signpost up ahead. Next stop: the Twilight Zone."

Rod Serling is in a class by himself, inspiring many imitators. The 2005 Koschnick Zone Calendar is not an imitation of Rod’s Twilight Zone. The only thing they have in common is the desire to stretch your imagination. The calendar resorts to the visual equivalent of what has been referred to as the lowest form of humor, the pun. The photographs are for the most part certainly staged, but are not manipulated or composite images. The scenes you see here existed in front of my camera at some point in time. Those of you who have seen Koschnick photography over the years may recognize some of these pictures – so no they are not all things photographed in the last year. Some of the images can simply stand alone with their title. In some cases I wanted to supply some text to push you gently in some direction that might not be obvious in the photograph. In one case I staged a photograph to go with something I had written.

Most sane people don’t want to know where these images came from, but I do get asked what made me think of this or that. I can’t really say, obviously most of them are not thought out and carefully refined. Often it’s like a line from an old Beatles song, “A Day In The Life”. In the song, the singer is describing rushing through his early morning ritual and just making the bus. He says, “somebody spoke and I went into a dream.” Some of these ideas come to me fully formed in response to somebody else’s spoken word. Luckily for you most of the things that pop into my head get forgotten before they can be committed to film.

I don’t know if there will be a 2006 Koschnick Zone Calendar, it all depends on how many crazy ideas actually make it to film. If you hang this calendar and actually use it, I hope you find the images to at least be a momentary diversion, and that maybe you will someday see something incongruous and smile and think, “That could be in the Koschnick Zone.”

Cohoes, NY 28 February, 2004