Endings and beginnings

For many of us, I suspect, 2020 is a year we are happy to put behind us -- kind of like seeing Lubbock in the rear view mirror, as the Mac Davis song goes. I've sure had some good times in Lubbock, but I never wanted to settle down there.

Photographically, the constraints imposed by the events of this year have lead me to explore new types of image making. I've taken an online workshop or two. And I have gone back through my archives of family photos with more care and attention than I otherwise would have. 

Still, I am as keen as anyone to turn the page on 2020, and that is what the image of the fire represents to me. 

Speaking of which, although I love film photography and shoot about a hundred rolls per year, digital imaging is also great, and in terms of shooting at night, I prefer it hands down to analog.

Two books to lift your spirits

I've been on a bit of a book acquisition kick lately. Mostly older books that are long out of print but that can still be found for not a lot of money from used bookstores and online auction houses. I typically find out about these books in a completely random way, which adds to the overall sense of enjoyment. I generally prefer to pick up a well worn copy of the book first, even if a few pages are missing or if there are a marks or even an inscription, just to see if I bond with the photographer. If there is no synergy, I can just pass the book along to someone else.

One of my favorite acquisitions this year was "A World Through My Window" by Ruth Orkin. The collection of photographs is exactly what you'd expect from the title, but you have to bear in mind that Ruth had a pretty amazing window on Central Park West. So the views are generally pretty spectacular. But still, documenting the goings on over a period of several decades resulted in an impressive body of work that should inspire any one. I found out some interesting things about the photographer, such as the fact that she bicycled from Los Angeles to New York in the 1930s.

I'm far from the madding crowds of NYC, but several of our windows are interesting to me. The first image was taken with the Polaroid SX-70 using their currently available black and white emulsion. Expensive, but the results can be very lovely indeed.

Nature's asymmetry

I've heard that C. P. Snow once said that not knowing the second law of thermodynamics is analogous to not having read a work of Shakespeare's. I wonder how many folks other than Snow himself have actually done both of these things. Well, I've tried and found both to be pretty challenging.

You can attend a play (fingers crossed) or watch a movie to learn about Shakespeare. On the other hand, if you want to learn about the second law, Peter Atkins's book on the subject is a good place to start. 

The key point about the second law is that although energy is conserved, the distribution of that energy changes in an irreversible manner through time. This leads to certain asymmetries in nature such as the spontaneous cooling of a hot object (but not the spontaneous heating of a cold object). By extension, the construction of new buildings and growth of plants comes at the cost of destruction elsewhere. 

In some sense, then, entropy is the subject of the photograph above. With the leaves gone for the season, we can study the manner in which the vine tries to cover the surface of the wall. The greater the coverage of leaves, the more energy available to the plant through photosynthesis. Humans apparently prefer to build using Cartesian geometry as a guide whereas plants are more free form or 'organic'.

Sonnar salutations

Knocking out a couple of sun salutations is a good way to get your juices flowing in the morning. Lately, a couple of lovely Zeiss Sonnar lenses have been waking up some of my photographs. The basic Sonnar lens design was developed at Zeiss in 1930 and the name derives from Sonne, German for sun.

The image of the cypress foliage was captured using the Zeiss Sonnar 100 mm f/3.5 lens mounted on a Contax ST. The film stock was Lomography Berlin and processing was done in a monobath, because why not? Interestingly, I think the negatives came out better using the monobath than when processed using separate solutions. At any rate, this is a really terrific lens that punches above its weight, and like most slowish lenses is cheap as chips. In addition to a pleasant rendering overall, good sharpness, a flat field, the bokeh is pretty spectacular too. Pairs well with digital sensors in addition to analog.

Play with your food

I was grocery shopping earlier this year and came across some organic honey that included a large chunk of the comb in the jar. This brought back a vague but pleasant memory of chewing on a piece of the comb as a kid, so I purchased the jar of organic honey instead of the stuff in the cute little plastic bear container. 

Suffice it to say that the honeycomb was far more interesting to photograph than it was to chew. Lighting was a bit tricky, though, as honey is a very reflective surface as are the walls of the comb. But, my trusty Rolleiflex SL66 and my Photoshop skills proved adequate.

Some might object to adjusting scanned film negatives in Ps, but I'm willing to go to hell and back as long as the image looks the way I want at the end.

Give a dog a bone

While it might be very nice indeed to find a shiny new or vintage camera waiting for you under the tree on Christmas morning, let's be honest, it's not that likely to happen. Best to just get over it. On the other hand, there are many things that are superior to that lump of coal you actually deserve. I always appreciate it when I find something interesting to photograph in my stocking. As an aside, a lump of coal might actually be interesting to shoot, but please don't tell any of my friends, I'll handle that on my own.

At any rate, sometimes the stocking stuffer is just an object, such as this ceramic piece. This photograph was taken with the Rolleiflex SL66. I really dig the result. The other nice thing is that these objects can spruce up your studio environment when they are not being photographed. That is what the managers call a 'win-win' situation, I believe. Hmm, probably not, but you know what I mean.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

 

Guam -- where America's day begins.

A Contax for Christmas

"At our best and most fortunate we make pictures because of what stands in front of the camera, to honor what is greater and more interesting than we are. We never accomplish this perfectly, though in return we are given something perfect -- a sense of inclusion. Our subject thus redefines us, and is part of the biography by which we want to be known." -- Robert Adams

From the back cover of Why People Photograph, seen in the image below. What is between the covers is also pretty good stuff.

You've stood in front of some interesting things this year, and you've tried to be a decent human being. In other words, you've put some real effort into your bio. You deserve something nice, but that kinda goes against your better nature, doesn't it?

Well, that's old Saint Beatnik standing in the background, with his cool crazy black beard, Dad. I hope he brings you something groovy this year, like a Contax.

Holga hell

There is certainly much to hate about social media. Don't worry, we are not going there, not even thinking about it. But, in terms of photography and art, one thing that annoys me about Instagram is how people tend to only show their best work. Me too! But scrolling through the extensive feed of an accomplished artist can really mess with your psyche. 

There is nothing particularly new here, of course. Elliott Erwitt once said that, "contact sheets should be as private as a toothbrush". Only showing the best work has long been part of the artist's mystique. 

Fine and dandy, but I still think it would be very interesting to see some near misses from time to time. 

My personal bete noir is the Holga. I don't know why. I've shot with actual broken cameras before. But after shooting dozens of rolls through it, I've finally started getting some okay images. No 'bodies of work', but solid images.

This one has a little of the famous Holga brooding atmosphere, and you can rest assured that I'll be sandwiching this negative with another one at some point. 

Throw away culture

Conventional wisdom (Time magazine, for what it's worth) has it that the first Christmas wreath was made from the branches that had been trimmed from the tree. There was less of a throw away culture back then, we are told. We have a fake tree in our house owing to my allergies to all things conifer, so I have no direct experience with the matter. I'll take Time at their word for now.

If I had come across this scene in the summer, I might have gravitated to 'nest' as metaphor, but 'tis the season, so maybe 'wreath' is more apt? At any rate, if you're looking to reinforce a nascent optimism, either will work, I think.

This image was taken with a workman like digital camera and a 35 mm lens. I have to say, I really like the field of view of a good old 35 mm lens.

Suspend your disbelief!

Are you more interested in observing photographic properties, or in experiencing a photograph? I'm not trying to be 'judge-y', just curious, is all. I mean, there are numerous endlessly fascinating properties of a photograph to explore, if not to optimize, if that is your thing. Bokeh, sharpness, depth-of-field, micro contrast, all of it. Then, there are the various metrics pertaining to the output to consider. 

My son told me not too long ago that he often streams movies on his phone with whatever ear buds are at hand. How big is your screen and how many channels does your sound system have? Does it matter? To be honest, I won't watch a horror movie no matter how lo-fi the system, because I know I'll be scared out of my mind regardless and will have nightmares for weeks.

On travel

If asked, I would say that one of the things I missed the most this year is traveling freely, taking road trips on a whim, things like that. Which makes sense at first blush, but if these excursions are so meaningful, why are there some I seem to have no memory of, even when looking at a photograph I took to document the trip? 

Apparently, we stayed in this cute little motel on a road trip long ago, but what were we up to? I have no idea. Was I wrapped up in job stuff, and is that where the empty spaces in memory occur? Is this image photographic evidence of being obsessed with work?! Ugh.

The dumbest thing I've ever done...

... photographically speaking.

A few years ago, we had a family reunion of sorts in Jackson, WY. It was the time it snowed in May. Wild stuff. It was also the time I made the stupidest mistake ever with my photo gear.

I decided to bring the Leica R6 as my main rig with the pocketable Rollei 35 as a sweet back-up. I was armed with the well respected 35 mm Summicron as well as the cheapish 28-70 mm Leica zoom. The latter is likely a rebranded Tokina or Sigma, but it seemed like a good, relatively compact walking around lens. 

For today's images, I was using Kodak Ektachrome 100 which I had every intention of processing in normal E-6 chemistry. I usually wait until I have 8-10 exposed rolls and then process them all at once so that the chemicals don't rot on the shelf. But I just wasn't shooting much E-6 at the time, so I made the decision to cross process in C-41 color chemistry. I know that the X-pro look can be over done, but I do really like the way these images came out. You'll note that the lens has a little geometric distortion. :) But the image does capture the mood I experienced on this walk.

Coloring outside the lines

I was paging through "Contact: Theory" again, this time reading what John Gossage had to say about how he selected the final negative for one of his fine art prints. Ultimately, the decision came down to a tiny detail at the edge of the frame of a single negative. When I read that, it occurred to me that most photographers probably would want to crop that little detail out, either in camera or in the darkroom, just to keep the edge of the frame tidy. I think we've all been there. 

Interesting how Gossage thought it important to keep that little detail in. Sometimes you need to compose loose, to color outside the lines. But if you never practice doing this, how are you going to be able to execute when the time comes? An interviewer once asked Charles Mingus, the great jazz bassist, how he was able to play so well when drinking. I'm sure you can guess his answer. The same way you get to Carnegie Hall.

I have a tendency to shoot these kind of 'urban exploration' scenes straight on, with the wall standing in for a canvas of sorts, I suppose. I like the composition, don't get me wrong.

Making marks and taking notes

I suspect this old van, which I photographed in NYC way back in the day, was actually owned by an artist or a group of artists, and they chose to cover its rotten paint job with graffiti. If you look closely, you'll see that it comes with instructions, "CONSIDER THIS ART". Very helpful, although by now, the issue is probably settled for most of us. 

I am happy to have captured this record of the early days of street art on film -- it was an exciting time. Some have even called it utopian. As I drink my tea and allow my mind to wander, I find myself contemplating whether images of public art can be considered works of art in their own right.

No one cares about your process

Every day we go for a brisk 45 minute walk that covers just under three miles. That, coupled with pushing around some weights and enduring 30 min of yoga several times a week, has kept us from spreading out too much over the past nine months. Walking turns out to be a very pleasant way to burn a few calories since you can chat, too, while you exercise. From another perspective, of course, we've actually accomplished exactly nothing by walking, since we depart from and return to the exact same location (for me that would be the sofa). 

The first image was taken using a digital camera and converted to black and white using software to simulate the look of film. The same software allows you to add a black border to the image, which I thought looked cool and added to the retro vibe. By the way, this image was not taken during the pandemic; the reason the streets are empty is because the temperature was about 10° F that morning.

 

Hold the mayo

I think it is probably a pretty good idea to chill with your old images every so often. We all love to push forward, which totally makes sense. I'm just suggesting that we make time once in a while to check in and see how our former selves are doing, is all. Of course, in order to be able to do that, we need to resist the impulse to burn all our old negatives whenever we are in a bad mood. Keep some hidden away at the bottom of an old box somewhere hard to get to. Years later, you'll be glad you did that. 

And when you do go back for a peek, if you're lucky, you will find a real gem that you previously overlooked for one reason or another. Other times you'll wonder what the hell you were doing putting a star filter on your lens. That kind of thing.

Here is an image I made back in the day on a trip to South Carolina. For some reason now lost to time, I put this one in the 'maybe' folder. Was the subject matter just a little too hackneyed? Was the arrangement of the branches just a tad off? I can't recall, but now, I like the image just fine. I am okay with the composition and I'm not the least bit angry with any of the trees for not having branches organized in a certain preconceived manner.

Ch-ch-ch-changes...

I wish I could remember the details, but I've heard it said that if you want to get classic images of a city like NYC, you should aim your camera to the third floor or higher when you shoot. I thought it would be fun to test that hypothesis by comparing an old photograph I made on a visit to NYC several decades ago with something current from Google Street View or Apple Maps.

So, here we go. Shown below is a photograph from the mid 1980s shot on the corner of Lafayette and Bond Streets looking roughly east along Bond. Great Jones would be the first street you came to if you went to the left. Canon AE-1, 50 mm f/1.4, Tri-X, Rodinal. 

Making art to move forward

Yesterday, my head was filled with uncertainty and dread, and I needed Yeats' faery to guide me through the door and past the ominous water. They could have chucked me in, but chose not to, for which I am grateful. Today, however, what lies beyond the portal bothers me less.

The image below was captured on the Rolleiflex SL66 using the 80 mm lens wide open at f/2.8 on Tri-X. Illumination comes from faery lights reflected in a window. They remind me of the summer fireflies and suggest an alternative origin story for Christmas tree lights.

Come away, O human child!

Some Yeats for today....

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you
can understand.

A schtickle of dish soap

When I was rising through the ranks as a young martial artist, I remember thinking that many of the senior black belts were essentially retired in place, no longer actively sparring or pushing themselves very hard in training. The coveted black obi was often just decoration, a status symbol, or a means to support their growing bellies. When I earned my black belt, I went in a different direction, and decided to start training in a different martial art. In other words, I went back to being a white belt again, which, if I'm honest, required a major attitude adjustment. 

Recently, I stumbled upon some images on Instagram tagged #filmsoup. This turns out to involve taking an exposed roll of film and cooking it on the stove in the broth of your choice: salt water, beet juice, vinegar... you get the idea. Of course, my first reaction was to roll my eyes since, of course, stuff like this has been tried before many times. 

Yet, why not come at this with more of a beginner's mind? So, I put my ego to the side and prepared some delicious film soup of my own. I boiled a roll of exposed Bergger Panchro 400 in a mixture of salt water, black tea dregs, and a schtickle of dish soap for 10 minutes. I let it dry in a sunny part of my studio for a week and then I developed the negatives normally in a 1:25 solution of Rodinal.

The roll of film I chose to process had been sitting around for a while, and I had forgotten what I had shot. Not the family Christmas photos in other words. The first image is of a door jamb I must have thought was interesting. Boiling water had the effect of warping the film emulsion in addition to the other effects. Visual research...

A pile of dead flies or dust in the wind?

One of my favorite photographs was made by the great Irish/American photographer Alen MacWeeney. At first glance, it merely records the landscape as seen through a window of an old country house. We see a field dotted with cattle, but in the foreground we also observe that the window sill is covered in a random pattern of dead flies that mirrors the arrangement of the cows outside. (The image can be seen at alenmacweeney.com).

Importantly, the depth of field extends all the way from the flies to the horizon. It is MacWeeney's concern with the formal aspects of the photograph that makes this a memorable image, because, really, who gives a damn about a pile of dead flies. 

I came across Alen's image again recently as I was flipping through a book called 'Contact: Theory' in which a curated group of photographers discuss their process of culling images from contact sheets. According to MacWeeney, "The illusion ... of having taken an exciting photograph is a burden ... unbalancing one's readiness to make a selection from what is on the contact sheet rather than what is in the mind."

The many lives of images...

I forget who first introduced me to 'Apogee', a jazz recording from the late 1970s that features Warne Marsh and Pete Christlieb, two highly regarded tenor players of their time. While the music is mostly straight ahead and pretty hard driving, there was something downright mellow about the album art, which is a picture of telephone wires against a background of sky and clouds. To my eye, the image appears as if it was composed in the square format, and, if I had to guess, I would say it was probably made using a Hasselblad. It looks like the final darkroom print was heavily toned and even splattered with chemicals.

The photographer was Benno Friedman, who states in an interview, "I think of myself as an abstract expressionist photographer... Taking the picture has been like stretching the canvas. It is not about the image. But freeing the elements of the image in order that they have their own life".

Transcribing solos

Do movies and television alter how we perceive the world? Undoubtedly, but they can sometimes also serve as inspiration in ways we might not intuitively expect. 

When we streamed the last season of Bosch in the Spring, I noticed the use of mirrored images in the title sequences. More recently, I've noticed a similar technique being used in a series we have been watching called 'The Capture'. Maybe it's a thing?

Regardless, it can be informative and also fun (remember fun?) to try to reproduce visual effects used by others in our own photographs. Kind of like transcribing solos in jazz, it can be way to grow in our own practice.

When shooting film, it is possible to have both the scanned negative and also the inverted positive at hand. Why not juxtapose them? Here is an example that works pretty well, I think. Balance or symmetry, that is the question... 

Layers of meaning

A variety of advanced imaging techniques have been developed by scholars to assist in the study of historical palimpsests. It has been possible to decipher important documents, to discover that certain manuscripts had been written over with liturgical texts rather than being burned, and the like.

In a similar vein, sometimes it is just simpler to repurpose an old or ugly building rather than tearing it down. As a result, architectural palimpsests abound in the modern urban landscape. Might photography be a useful tool for artists to begin to understand these elements of their built environment?

If well seen, images of architectural palimpsests can make interesting abstract compositions in their own right. If done really well, perhaps the viewer is also invited to create an accompanying narrative that leads to some new understanding on their part?

Being open to inspiration

Keeping a loose but consistent schedule has helped us maintain a modicum of sanity over the past eight months. So, while pizza and a movie on Friday evenings has always been a thing for us, it has become nearly sacrosanct in 2020. This week's watch was a film about Moholy-Nagy called "The New Bauhaus". Zwei daumen hoch, Leute. 

On Saturday morning, we went for a little photo walk, and I guess thoughts of Moholy had been percolating in my brain subconsciously overnight, because I came back with some rather Bauhausian images.

The instrument of choice this day was the Leica R6.2 with the 60 mm f/2.8 macro lens attached. This is a terrific lens, by the way, one that, in my experience, also pairs very harmoniously with digital sensors. Since it was designed to image up close, you have to be a little careful when focusing on subjects in the distance, but that quirk just serves to promote mindfulness, never a terrible thing.

The weather was crisp, clear and bright, so I grabbed two rolls of medium speed film on my way out the door.

I had a roll of Foma 100 loaded when I made the photograph below. This is a cheapish emulsion made in the Czech Republic and this was my first time shooting it. Very decent results, I would say, and I'll gladly shoot more Foma in the future. What caught my eye in this scene was the door to nowhere about 3 m up. Perhaps this is the smoking area? 

Is nostalgia always such a bad thing?

I've always tended to think that nostalgia is for idiots, and although I still have a real aversion to it, this year, as the days get shorter and we brace for the long, dark winter ahead, I find myself going through my old negatives and lingering on images that move me a little in that direction. 

Is this the first sign of some age-related mental decay, or is it something more benign, like simply wanting to think that things ultimately will get back to normal? I have a feeling it is the latter, which is kind of okay, I think. That being said, when I was younger, I probably would have burned the nostalgia-provoking negatives just to be on the safe side. So maybe there is a kind of decay going on after all. 

Flea markets and birthday suits

A number of years ago, my wife and I were in the habit of going to flea markets and thrift stores pretty frequently. When prices started going crazy and the pickings got slim, our visits tapered off. A couple of times a year we'd pack coffee and snacks, and head over to Atlanta to spend hours looking around Scott's Antique Market. There were usually cool discoveries to be made on every outing, and we'd normally come home with a carload of vintage furniture and a camera or two. With money still in our wallets, to boot. During those trips is when I started buying old cameras in earnest, anything that looked interesting. One Christmas, my wife gifted me several rolls of film, and that's when I decided to make a practice of not just collecting, but shooting each and every old camera I picked up.

Inevitably, you'll forget about a roll of partially exposed film sitting in one of your cameras, only to discover it years or even decades later. When this happens, it is an invitation to do a little personal archeology to figure out what the hell you were thinking or doing at the time you made a given exposure.

At one point, my wife rented space in an old country schoolhouse for her studio. While she was working, I used to enjoy walking around the place looking for interesting compositions. I'd forgotten about this until I found some old negatives lying around. Old plaster and lathe walls are always worth investigating. At this point in photographic history, you'll never get rich or famous taking photographs of old walls, but it is a good way to develop your sense of composition. Plus, I'll be honest, I just like walking around taking pictures of things, "to see what they look like when photographed", as Winogrand famously said.

The color palate of the film emulsion adds another dimension to images of this kind that I particularly like, too.

Blue Highways and Flyover Country

After settling in Austin, my trips back to Los Angeles slowly dwindled in frequency from about twice a year to every now and then. Mostly, I would fly to save time, but on one occasion, I decided to drive in order to see with my own eyes what some folks refer to as 'flyover country'. The journey West by car truly was a great experience, but, unfortunately some jackass Angelino stole my license plates and I had to drive back to Texas with no tags. It was a bummer -- I got stopped by a tag teaming pair of CHP cars near the Arizona border. Seriously, guys?! In retrospect, maybe they were just a bit bored, but the episode unnerved me a little, and I spent the rest of the trip home with one eye always looking in the side view mirror.

Anyway, the only camera I had with me at the time was a Canon AE-1 and a 50 mm f/1.4. A person could do far worse than that. I was going through a phase where I developed my Tri-X in Rodinal plus sodium sulfite. In my one and only photojournalism class, I had been criticized for too much grain in my Rodinal souped negatives, and the addition of sulfite was supposed to ameliorate this issue. It did, but at the expense of yielding pretty thin negatives. That was actually fine for darkroom printing, but I'm not so sure about how well it works for modern day scanning. A bit of a moot point with these negatives, though, isn't it?

Most of the driving time was spent crossing the State of Texas, and I was traveling along what are sometimes called blue highways -- I was avoiding the interstates, in other words. There were plenty of spectacular vistas, and stopping to take a picture didn't really have much of an impact on travel time. I have absolutely no recollection of where I was when I took this photograph, but looking at it now does trigger other memories from the trip.

Pining for PolaChrome

I was paging through Beth Moon's "Ancient Trees" the other day, and, in addition to the photographs, I enjoyed the following quote from W. S. Merwin: "...trees may be one of the things I miss most from the earth".

I think many of us might agree with that sentiment, even though we each might have our own unique reasons why. And this may also be why we feel compelled to photograph trees, to help us hold on to our memories of them as long as we can.

One of the most impressive trees I've personally ever seen is growing in a cemetery just outside of Nashville, TN. That day, I was using the Leica R6, the 35 mm Summicron, and a roll of Kodak XX. 

While it is a spectacular tree, I can't help thinking that it's a bit of a shame to only photograph the oldest, tallest, and most beautiful trees. 

What about the trees in our own backyards? 

Working with the Leica IG

During the pandemic, I decided to stop going to the gym, and a daily vigorous walk has emerged as a new habit. If I stop to take a picture, my wife generally keeps walking, so I can't faff about as they say on the British TV shows we've been streaming lately. I've lost a little weight over the past eight months, so I think our system is working reasonably well.

On a recent outing, I brought along a Leica IG from the mid-1950s. These cameras were never intended for regular shooting; instead, they were made for a variety of technical applications, such as mounting on microscopes. Consequently, they have neither a range finder nor a view finder, and are basically a light tight box with a shutter. On the plus side, they have often been well cared for and not used to within an inch of their lives. Mine has a small, but very noticeable dent on the top that the seller told me rendered it 'uncollectible'. So I got it for half price. Yay! Other than the dent, my copy looks and functions like a brand new camera. For the walk, I added the 50 mm f/3.5 Elmar, also from the mid-1950s, and an external viewfinder. I was shooting a bulk loaded short roll of Ultrafine Extreme 400. For this set-up to work, you have to be comfortable zone focusing or shooting at the hyperfocal distance. Oh, and you should be okay with estimating exposure using Sunny 16. Very doable with some practice and it helps develop your craft. All part of getting your 10,000 hours in, if you believe in that sort of thing.

We live not too far from our local synagogue and we pass it pretty much every day on our walks. In the Fall, the children always build a tabernacle for Succos. This year, I thought their efforts turned out really well, and I especially liked the use of bamboo in the construction.

These days pretty much any camera can make sharp and contrasty images, and it is easy to take awesome results for granted. But, 65 years ago, when most folks were snapping away with box cameras, this kind of quality must have been truly jaw dropping.

Snowmen of Dixie

Every year at this time, we have our fingers crossed for a hard freeze or two to kill the vermin that might otherwise plague us in the Spring. The first cold front of the season has just blown through the area, and the temperatures are going to dip below freezing this week, so I'd say we are off to a good start. 

Once in a blue moon, we'll even get snow, which melts as soon as it hits the pavement, only sticking around for a day or so on the grassy areas and in the shade. Hey, I'm not complaining, we get the beauty without the hazards or cleanup. 

And, like good folks everywhere, when it does snow, we feel compelled to build snow people. These poor, wobbly creatures are often a sight for sore eyes, with red clay, dead leaves, and twigs clinging to their icy skins.

This lonely fellow was captured on film using a Contax G1 and the 45 mm f/2 lens. Lucky thing, too, because he was gone forever by the next day.

The essence of photography

Growing up in Los Angeles, I always found it hard to appreciate the place, and couldn't wait to find a way out. I didn't like the crowds or traffic, and decided I preferred the more relaxed vibe of Austin, Texas. It was a good move for me and for a long time I did not return to my old home town for years at a stretch. More recently, though, I've had occasion to visit every two years on a semi-regular basis, and, although I hate to admit it, the place has started to grow on me.

On my trips back to the Southland, I will always make time to spend most of one day hanging out at the Getty Museum. Even if the exhibits are not to my taste, which is almost never the case, the landscaping, architecture, and views are all pretty spectacular.

A photography exhibit I saw at the Getty about five or six years ago had a huge impact on me -- I actually purchased the catalogue despite it's size and weight (I really prefer to travel light). The show was called "Light, Paper, Process: Reinventing Photography". In the introductory essay, Virginia Heckert pointed out that throughout its history, "photography has been shaped by a desire to understand the essence of the medium". The exhibit featured seven contemporary artists who were 'interrogating and reinventing' the medium of photography through their work.

This exhibit was where I first came in contact with Alison Rossiter's work. She scours the Internet to find old (up to a hundred years old) photographic paper and then processes it in her own darkroom. No camera; no lens. The results are stunning abstract images that also maintain a strong connection to the history of photography. Pretty great.

I knew right away that I wanted to experiment with some expired darkroom paper on my own. So I went to eBay and picked up a couple of packages of 3x5 inch paper that expired in 1968. It was actually difficult to find anything; I guess Alison really did buy everything up. I just developed it in a tray of Dektol, and this is what happened.

Dancing on the head of a pin?

When going out to shoot photographs on 35 mm film, I tend to reach for a lens in the 28-60 mm focal length range. Within those limits, my comfort zone is definitely between 35 mm and 50 mm. While I'm getting more comfortable at the wider end thanks, in large part, to my cell phone, 28 mm is still a bit of a push for me. 

Sometimes, though, an even more dramatic change in perspective can lead to interesting photographs being made. Such as going out with a telephoto lens or a fisheye and nothing else. 

The first image is of water bubbles in a pond shot using a Zeiss 200 mm f/4 lens, the Contax RTS II, and a roll of Lomo Potsdam 100 film. I dragged the shutter a bit to make things more interesting in the final image. (For the record, I do have some documentary style images where everything is in crisp focus. But they are kind of boring. Just saying. And as an aside, the RTS II is one of the most pleasant shooters out there in my opinion.)

The lack of anything in the frame to establish scale adds a certain ambiguity and mystery to the photograph that I really enjoy. Perhaps this is actually an image of atoms undergoing a melting transition?

Shootin' the 'boo

The first time I ever heard of the concept of a lawsuit was in connection with bamboo. When I was about ten years old, my father had planted some bamboo near the property line of our house in the suburbs of Los Angeles, and apparently it had fared much better than expected. So much so, in fact, that a bunch of it had intruded into the neighbor's yard, and was growing out of control there as well. Our neighbor was not a bamboo fan, and threatened to sue if my father didn't get the situation under control in short order.

Funnily enough, we have a couple of areas on our property where bamboo grows. And I have found it to be very photogenic throughout its yearly life cycle. 

The first image was taken using a very old 50 mm Summicron on an original Leicaflex camera. This is the first reflex camera ever made by Leica in the mid 1960s and, with its external light meter window, looks a bit like a cyclops. It is also unique in the Leicaflex line for having a mirror lock up feature, which allows you to mount the 21 mm f/3.4 wide angle lens. This image was taken in late Spring, when the new growth is at its peak. I was pleasantly surprised with the high quality images produced by this combination.

Mix and match

When I was a teenager and first learning how to work in the darkroom, I remember someone showing me how to tilt the enlarging easel while making a print to take care of perspective issues such as the keystone effect. I also remember making a solarized print of my cat that kind of blew my mind when I saw the process in real time. Which reminds me, I really need to see if I can find that image. At any rate, these darkroom manipulations always amazed me, they seemed like a kind of alchemy.

Nevertheless, for some reason, I initially balked at working on my analog images using the computer, as if it were somehow important to maintain a 100% analog workflow. What was that all about? I'm happy to say I'm over it now.

Here is an image I held onto for quite a while because I was unhappy with some converging lines in the concrete as well as the over all crop of the frame. It was shot on a roll of ORWO film that expired in 1975. The image was taken on a hot August afternoon using the Rolleiflex SL66 and 80 mm lens. Now that I've made some digital adjustments to my analog image, I'm so much happier with the final result. That said, although I did crop, I maintained the original 1:1 aspect ratio. Baby steps.

Making images for yourself

Sometimes we make photographs just for ourselves, or we hold particular images dear for personal reasons (including vanity). I'm not talking about snapshots -- of course, we all take plenty of those, as evidenced by the constant lack of free memory on our phones. I'm referring to considered or even artful images that we make because we feel compelled to push the shutter button, or shots we become fond of after seeing the scans or prints or after the passage of time. 

Often enough, other viewers don't give damn about about these personal favorites. Like the time I took a picture of a dozen farm fresh eggs and texted it to my brother. This garnered the response, "Why the hell would you take a picture of a bunch of eggs?" He was not jazzed about 'tones'. Sorry. I should have just savored the image on my own.

A couple of years ago we were visiting Nashville. It was a hot and humid Southern summer day, par for the course, and, furthermore, the building was not air conditioned. I was very deliberately lining up the composition below with the sculpture partially veiled by the window treatments, when a small puff of wind caused the curtains on the left of the frame to billow out. That was the decisive moment for me, so I took the photograph.

I'm very fond of this image, it is a personal favorite. It captures a certain truth about the South for me, and I like the mixed lighting. But I knew it would not have wide appeal, and, sure enough, when I shared it on social media, it got zero love. So it goes, I guess. (Details: Leica R6, 35 mm f/2, Portra 400).

Three Lovely 21st Century Film Cameras

Twice a year, I like to go through my camera collection to exercise shutters, remove forgotten or dead batteries, and mull over the possibility of culling the herd to make room for something new. This year, happily, it was decided by the powers that be that there was to be no culling, but it did suddenly dawn on me that many of my beloved photographic instruments were, in fact, older than I am. And that realization got me to thinking about the age distribution of my little stable of cameras. 

Today I want to consider the youngest cameras in my collection, specifically, the three that were manufactured this century. If my internet research is accurate, then all of these cameras were made in the early 2000’s, which means they are still getting a bit long in the tooth. Nevertheless, they are all very robust and dependable. Who knows, perhaps my son will be shooting with them well into the future.

Pastiche or allusion?

At one time or another, I think we all feel motivated make art that pays respect to individuals who have had an impact on us. Homage and tribute are often used to describe this kind of work, but I'm not a huge fan of these terms because they harken back to Medieval notions of fealty. Not really my cup of tea, and not the source of my motivation either, if I'm being honest. The notion of a remix is not exactly what I have in mind either right now, although it certainly is a useful concept and I'm not bashing it. 

Lately, I've been taken with the notion of pastiche as being the most, dare I say, palatable, description of this kind of imitative way of working. Here is an example of a pastiche that tries to reference Winn Bullock. Just as with the original photograph, my image documents an apple that has been divided in two. The image was captured on film using the Rolleiflex SL66. Still life is a much more difficult genre to work in than one might expect, but on the other hand, no two apples are exactly the same.

In praise of vintage glass

One of the attractive things about mirrorless digital cameras is the possibility of mounting a wide range of lenses, including vintage glass from the so-called film era. I thought it would be interesting to compare modern and vintage glass mounted on a Foveon sensor camera, just to see if this is an area that I might want to explore in more detail going forward. 

It is worth noting that the quirky design of the Sigma sd Quattro, with its rather long flange-to-sensor distance, excludes many possible vintage lenses from the get go, which is kind of a drag, but luckily you can just barely accommodate the old M42 mount lenses with the wafer thin M42-Sigma lens adapter. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of these lenses to choose from, but our victim this time around is the Pentax Takumar 35 mm f/2 from the early 1960s. I had just picked up a copy of this early wide angle lens and was keen to give it a test drive. Modern Sigma glass is highly regarded, and I am lucky to have the 70 mm f/2.8 macro Art lens at my disposal. So those are the two lenses we will discuss today.

I enjoy shooting the crab apple blossoms each year. They are convenient and beautiful subjects and the foliage in the background means bokeh will be plentiful. The Foveon sensor has a way of making the petals of flowers look like they are made of paper. It's an effect that I like. Despite the artful rendition, the lens is a very modern design and that is reflected in the image, too. Most objectionable aberrations are well controlled, the color is accurate, and the bokeh is pleasing to the eye.

Foveon, both obscure and desirable...

I had a friend who was an art historian and who practiced photography on the side. Whenever we chatted about photography he brought up the topic of the Foveon sensor. For whatever reason, his descriptions never hooked me in, and I didn't give the matter of the Foveon sensor much consideration at the time. 

Of course, the physical basis of how the Foveon sensor records light is actually unique, making it an alternative worth considering for digital image capture. Fortunately for me, and others on a limited budget, most Foveon sensors are housed in cameras characterized by a certain clunkiness of operation. Let's just leave it at that. One consequence of this clunkiness is that cameras with Foveon sensors are available for pretty affordable prices on the used market.

The picture of the cup of matcha highlights a couple of Foveon characteristics that are worth noting right off the bat. The first is that the apparent resolution is much greater than suggested by the pixel count. Second, the color rendition is remarkable, very different from that of other digital sensors, and not unlike that of color film, especially in the shadow areas. In other words, the images have the bite we often associate with digital files and a nuanced rendition of color that harkens back to film.

Giacometti people

With Fall already upon us and Winter rapidly approaching, the sun is much lower in the sky, elongating the shadows in the afternoon when we walk. Generally, I find it preferable not to walk alone, and I am lucky to have two companions with me on most days, my wife and a camera. It helps a lot if your human accomplice practices Tai Chi while you look for compositions in the landscape. That way, no one gets too bored, and you can encourage each other to keep up a decent tempo when you are moving forward.

I think we look like Giacometti people, like winter trees after their leaves have fallen to the ground. Over the course of a few weeks last Fall, I took a whole series images like this, chose the better ones, and made a dozen or so copies of a zine to give away to family and friends. They probably just tucked their copies away somewhere -- hopefully to be rediscovered many years hence. I have my fingers crossed that their future surprise will bring back fond memories. 

Further adventures in half-frame

In previous posts I've talked about some of the things I enjoy about working with the Olympus Pen series of half-frame film cameras. If you don't know, there were three different versions of the camera body that were produced over the years, and I am fortunate to have nice working examples of each. The first version -- the classic Pen, with it's outsized gothic F machined into the face plate -- is a double stroke model, requiring two flicks of the thumb to tension the shutter and advance the film. Then there is the FV model with no built in light meter, that supposedly has a brighter viewfinder than its siblings. I have never found that to be the case. My personal favorite, though, is the Pen-FT, but that has to do more with the fact that mine is the stylish all-black version. Function follows form for these well designed photographic instruments.

One thing I don't love about half frame cameras in general is the fact that a standard roll of film gives you 72 shots. Sometimes more is definitely not better. It might be handy on vacation, but it can be real a pain to fire off 72 frames in a single casual shoot. I've found two ways to get around this, because I like developing a roll of film as soon as possible after shooting. I'm a bit spoiled by my digital camera, I guess. At any rate, the first work around is to bulk roll your own shorty rolls with as much or as little film as you would like. The other is to use a device called the Lab Box, which I've recently acquired. It is a daylight film development tank that you can use to easily develop a partial roll of film, leaving the rest inside the cassette to use another day.

One other consideration is that the size of the negative ultimately limits the final size of the prints you can make, just due to resolution issues. For me, a print that would fit within an 8x10 inch sheet of paper is about as large as I would ever go. If you are just posting scans on IG, not a problem.

Today's images were taken on Ektachrome. The first image shows the interesting geometry of one elevation of a new building under construction. It highlights another characteristic of half frame photography that I am actually quite fond of. The aspect ratio of the image is 4x3 rather than 3x2, and I tend to prefer that for many compositions. Shooting in a different aspect ratio is also a good way to spark creativity.

Responding to the will of the negative

The Olympus Pen F series of half frame cameras tick many boxes for me. They are beautiful examples of innovative industrial design and state-of-the-art engineering (for their time, certainly). They put the photographer at the center of the process of making images and the lenses produce spectacular results.

I was out for a walk toward the end of the day, and the Pen F was loaded with Kodak Ektachrome 100 slide film. I thought it would be interesting to use a fine grained film because of the small size of each negative in the half-frame format. That afternoon, I was noticing the contrast between the built environment and the trees in the landscape. I was using the normal lens, the 38 mm f/1.8 Zuiko. 

Once I had the chromes scanned into my computer, I began to observe certain recurring relationships between pairs of images. Several of these groupings contained a significant amount of negative space, where the image itself fell into shadow to include the film rebate between two adjacent frames (which is black in slide film).

"I think of the will of the negative, and how I should respond to it", said Ralph Gibson who also said, "I prefer to have the shadows go completely black to produce strong shapes".

A nice walking around camera

Brunch may not be your favorite assignment if you are a line cook. After all, the dining room will probably be totally packed, and the menu won't be the restaurant's most innovative, either. Face it, brunch is the bread and butter shift and is what gives you the wiggle room (so to speak) to offer items like braised octopus on the dinner menu. On the other hand, as a photographer, brunch can be a good excuse to get out and shoot some nice images after an enjoyable meal accompanied by copious amounts of coffee. 

The walk home from our favorite brunch spot is very pleasant and rich in photographic opportunities as the area is undergoing serious and rapid gentrification. The question is, what is a good walking around camera to take with you on such an adventure? Fortunately, there are any number of good answers to that question, but one set-up I particularly like centers on the Leica R4s. It's small, light weight, intuitive to use, and allows you to mount that yummy Leitz glass on the front. As well, they are as cheap as chips on the used market. You can pick one up for around $125. Crazy. The R4s was made in Portugal and has the reputation of having flaky electronics. At the end of the day, it isn't particularly collectible, which is good news for us shooters. My attitude is that all the units with bad circuitry have given up the ghost already, leaving the fit to survive. I decided to just grab one and go shooting. 

I had chosen an older 50 mm f/2 as my lens for the day, to keep things compact. These older Summicrons can also be had for a decent price. Indeed, you could put together quite a nice little combo for under $500. Anyway, the film of the day was Ilford Delta 400. 

The sun was high in the sky after brunch, but that helped accentuate the textures on this clapboard structure, which was past due for a fresh coat of paint. I am really glad I documented this building because it has now been renovated. I'm sure the occupants are much happier, but its less interesting photographically.

Visual research...

I recently ran across a short, but thought-provoking, article by Jerry Uelsmann from the late 1960s that is definitely worth revisiting after half a century (www.uelsmann.net/_img/writing/post-visualization.pdf). In it, Uelsmann talks about the post-visualization of images -- essentially, the process of re-visualizing the final image at any point in the artist's workflow.

The so-called money quote:

"It is my conviction that the darkroom is capable of being, in the truest sense, a visual research lab; a place for discovery, observation, and meditation. To date, but a few venturesome souls have tentatively explored the darkroom world of the camera-less image, the negative sandwich, multiple printings, the limited tonal scale, et cetera. Let us not be afraid to allow for post-visualization. By post-visualization I refer to the willingness on the part of the photographer to re-visualize the final image at any point in the entire photographic process. Let us not delude ourselves by the seemingly scientific nature of the darkroom ritual; it has been and always be a form of alchemy."

I especially like the juxtaposition here of the concepts of research and alchemy, which suggests infinite possibility.

Below is an example of a post-visualized image created by sandwiching two 35mm negatives (one color and the other B/W) in the same holder and digitizing the montage on a flatbed scanner.

Capturing the atmosphere

At the end of the summer I took my car in for its annual tune up. It's a BMW X1, super base model. No ups or extras. It is also the last model they made before they started putting the engines in sideways, so it drives nice, like a sedan, and I want to keep it around for a while.

The dealership looks like a place you'd want to take your BMW, too, as long as you stay on the immediate premises. But, naturally, I was wandering around in back with a camera while they were working on my car, and it is as if I was transported to a movie set where they were about to film the police discovering a grizzly crime scene and finding a corpse. Everything was paved over, and there were a bunch of weathered and wrecked cars scattered about, as well as an old semi trailer.  

The place was locked down. Chain link fence was everywhere and the barbed wire was overgrown with vines. In other words, I found myself in a fun location to shoot. I had a roll of Ferrania P30 loaded in the Leica R9 and the 50 mm Summilux mounted on the front. The film appears to have some orthochromatic properties (blue sensitivity), an abundance of contrast, and all this was a really good match to the mood of the scene. In my opinion, the P30 did a particularly fine job of capturing the hot and humid atmosphere of the morning.

A supposedly fun thing I'll never do again...

"Not until Lobster Night did I understand the Roman phenomenon of the vomitorium".

"The toilet's flush produces a brief but traumatizing sound, a kind of held high-B, as of some gastric disturbance on a cosmic scale".

Being isolated on a cruise ship for a week as it toured the Carribbean may have provoked existential dread in David Foster Wallace, but, in all honesty, reading his essay in Harper's made me want to go on a cruise more than ever.

Similarly, it is hard to resist the allure of making 'cinematic' photographs by simply running actual movie film through your 35 mm stills camera. It sure sounds like fun! The cosmic-level disturbance in this case is something called Remjet, a black layer of carbonaceous gunk on the surface of the film required for its use in cinema cameras, but that needs to be removed if you want to scan or print your images as still photographs. Just rub it off in warm water with your thumb! The additional manual labor just adds to the myth.

My experience shooting Vision 3 cinema film was more spartan than sybaritic and definitely insanity-producing. Remjet is a bitch. I ended up with sticky black crap all over the place and dirty, water spotted negatives that I thought were totally ruined.

The (almost) decisive moment

I recently saw an interview with Joel Meyerowitz during which he referred to one of his previously unpublished photographs as an 'observation'. I thought that was a pretty useful term. Less pejorative than 'snapshot', which might seem to imply that the photographer didn't really give a damn. On the other hand, 'observation' suggests that you at least aimed the camera with intent and pushed the shutter button at approximately the decisive moment, but that for one reason or another, the final result fell a little short. The image is not one you'd select for a gallery show or even choose show to your pixel peeping friend. Maybe the composition is a bit off, that sort of thing. But, still, you don't want to permanently delete it from your archive, either. Some ineffable force prevents you from hitting the delete button. Fact is, you don't mind looking at this image every so often, when you go back through your files. It is actually kind of gratifying to have a record of all of your 'observations' over the years, I think. Perhaps a series of these 'observations' would actually be worth a show? At least, it might tell you something about yourself.

Here is an image that qualifies as an observation. What I was thinking at the time was something like this. Is the tree lopsided because the layout of the parking lot dictated how the landscaper trimmed the tree over the years? Entropy in other words. Or was the tree allowed to grow unconstrained for years, and then, when they paved the parking lot, it was just easier to construct the parking lot around the unusually shaped tree? In either case, I'm glad they didn't just cut down the tree.

That's so random...

Adding a dash of randomness into your process of making photographs can sometimes lead to interesting outcomes (or not, failure is possible, too). Perhaps you will discover a new way of working, gain deeper insight into why you prefer a particular subject, or find new compositional relationships. One time honored way to do this is to experiment with double/multiple exposures.

This photograph was taken a long time ago on a trip down the Natchez Trace from Nashville, TN to Natchez, MS. I found this image in my archive, but candidly, have absolutely no memory of making this frame. Upon reflection, and after a bit of head scratching, I am beginning to suspect that it was, in fact, made by my wife! Which brings up the additional important point that collaboration with a friend or partner is another great way to introduce randomness into your process.