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.

As good as church letting out

Recently, I came across and purchased a set of books published in 1980 by Lustrum Press, all edited by Carol di Grappa. So far I have found three -- Landscape: Theory, Contact: Theory, and Fashion: Theory -- that seem to form a series. Contact: Theory features discussions about contact sheets, a fascinating topic, worthy of discussion in itself. The topics of the other two volumes are just what you'd expect from the titles. All three present the work of an interesting cross section of photographers. Some are no longer alive after 40 years, and others have faded from our attention. But the work is solid, and it is informative to go back and read what was on folks's minds half a lifetime ago. 

Taken to the cleaner

Once I'd decided that the Rolleiflex SL66 was a keeper, I started thinking about picking up some additional lenses and building up a small kit. One lens that I'd read about and wanted to own was the 120 mm f/5.6 S-Planar. The S in the name of the lens indicates that its optical design is optimized for close-up imaging. So, I hopped over to my favorite auction site to see what was available, and grabbed a copy that was described as excellent with a bunch of plusses. 

To test out my new lens, I took a few shots of plants around the house. 

The first image was taken with a reference lens, the 80 mm f/2.8. Everything looks just fine here. You may notice the pentagonal bokeh in the background. That is due to the fact that the iris itself has five straight blades. The out of focus highlights in the background have the same shape as the lens aperture. Modern lenses tend to have more aperture blades and they also may be curved a bit to mitigate this effect which many might find distracting. Me, I'm fine with it most of the time.

Plato's Summicron

Most of us would like the opportunity to experience the finer things in life. These days we have an acronym for it, FOMO, but it's been around for ages. A powerful force is FOMO. Years ago, my brother nicked a bottle of Dom Perignon from his girlfriend's father's wine cellar for the two of us to drink. I still remember the sense of anticipation I felt while we were sitting around waiting for it to chill down. But I digress...

Lenses are to photographers as Dom is to champagne lovers, or as speakers are to audiophiles. Many of us end up on a quest to acquire the ultimate lens in a search for that je ne sais quoi it will impart to our images. For me, that lens was the Leica 35 mm Summicron R. 

I think this narrative is pretty familiar to most folks up to this point, so what I'd like to do is jump to the denouement and talk about some of the differences between Plato's Summicron and my copy of the lens.

The first image is a view of the Snake River Valley in Jackson, WY. I was hiking with the Summicron mounted on a R6 body using a low speed, fine grained film (ISO 12). As a result, this exposure was made at f/4. At this aperture, a lens of this vintage (at least 30 years old) is not at its best for landscape shooting, and the image is pretty soft in the corners. My fault, of course, both because I was very much aware of this property of the lens and also because I could easily have brought a tripod. Still, seeing the fuzzy negative brought me back to earth a little bit. 

Back in the darkroom

I took one, and only one, photography class at university. I just didn't connect with the way the material was being taught and never took another course there. It was an introductory photojournalism class and the print critiques were always very focused on technical details, such as why did you use Rodinal for these negatives? Don't you know that huge balls of grain don't suit every subject? That kind of thing. For whatever reason, I was enamored of the Rodinal look at the time -- are, bure, boke, baby -- but nobody was buying that as an argument. Plus, I agitated my film like I was shaking a martini, which didn't help matters very much either. 

On the other hand, I learned a tremendous amount in the darkroom, both by making a lot of crappy prints (and a few good ones), but also by chatting with the man who managed the university's teaching darkrooms. For example, he once told me I should experiment with as many cameras and film formats as I could until I found the right tool for me. He said I'd know when I'd found it. I couldn't afford to do take his advice at the time, as much as I may have wanted to. 

I was always a bit sheepish about picking up my prints from the public space at the end of a working session. I was never completely satisfied with my results, I guess. Ultimately, I tired of working in a shared space and started maintaining a guerrilla darkroom in a large closet wherever I happened to be living at the time. 

Recently, I've converted a small bathroom into a darkroom, and I've started printing again. Fun!

Subject, camera, photographer, memory...

We choose to take a photograph because we feel a personal connection to the subject. There is a link between the thing photographed, the camera, and the photographer. When we revisit a photograph after a period of time has elapsed, we often cannot remember the details, or even why we made the photograph in the first place. The action of time on memory depends on our experiences and is fundamentally different than it is for a photograph, which is basically unchanged over time.

Often, how we choose to post-process or print a photograph changes over time as well.

Here is a photograph I took several years ago in Ventura, California, about an hour away from where I grew up in Los Angeles. This image was captured using the Leica R8, the 35 mm f/2 lens, and Ilford HP5+. It was developed and scanned at a lab, and is therefore perhaps the best representation of the experience between me, the beach at sunset and the gear I had with me at the time.

Mercy, mercy, mercy...

One of the particular charms of analog photography is that sometimes mistakes happen, sometimes things turn out just a little different than expected. Sometimes adversity comes up. Cannonball Adderley, the great jazz alto player, offered up some pretty solid advice on how to manage, way back in 1966. This is how he introduced the song "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy", recorded live at 'The Club':

You know, sometimes we're not prepared for adversity. When it happens, sometimes we're caught short. We don't know exactly how to handle it when it comes up.

Of course, the tune itself provides the complete answer to the question, so you'll have to listen to it at some point. How does this relate to photography? Well, sometimes you just don't love a certain film stock, but you bought a brick of it. What can you do with 10 rolls of film that you are not that fond of? Maybe just experiment a little bit and see what happens. In my case, I decided to expose a couple of rolls while I was streaming TV. I played around with exposure settings, especially dragging the shutter.

The image below shows one of the more interesting frames I got. It has not been manipulated at all (except for being rotated 90°). I'm still not quite sure how this image came about, but I think it works pretty well as an abstract composition. For me, it references the landscape. By the way, it was captured using the Leica R9 with the 135mm f/2.8. For whatever reason, this lens is not very popular and copies can be had for bargain basement prices. Yet the lens was designed by the famous lens designer Walter Mandler. It's a solid performer.

A responsibility to awe

One winter morning a few years ago, I woke to find the ground covered with a layer of fresh snow. As I walked through the yard, I saw a raccoon skull on the driveway. The textures of the skull contrasted with the white of the snow -- it was almost as if the skull was being presented to me. How had that happened? I proceeded to collect the skull and brought it to my studio, where, over the next few days, I photographed it in order to better understand it. 

The first image shows the skull on a piece of wood, actually my studio floor. The image was captured on Ferrania P30 film using a Leica SL2 and a 50 mm Summicron lens. P30 film is a new version of the film stock used by Fellini and others in the 1960s.

What makes skulls so interesting as subject matter? I think Rebecca Elson can help us here. She was an astronomer and poet whose sole book of poetry is called “A Responsibility to Awe”. The final stanza of her poem "Antidotes to Fear of Death", gives an interesting perspective on skulls:

To walk across the cobble fields

Of our discarded skulls,

Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis,

Thinking: whatever left these husks

Flew off on bright wings.

That Leica feeling

At some point on your photographic journey, you're going to want to shoot with a Leica. You're going to want to see for yourself what the Leica hardware brings to your images. You're going to be at least tempted to do it, and you'll give it some serious thought. I've been there, but I never really wanted to lay out the cash required to get into the M-system. I turned my attention instead to the Leica reflex cameras and they've kept me pretty busy ever since. As with all film cameras, they are not being made anymore, but they definitely had a good run (1964-2009). The penultimate Leica R camera was the R8, which is unique looking, let's put it that way. A few years ago they were practically giving them away, and the lenses were pretty affordable, too, at least the non-exotic ones. That is not so much the case anymore as folks have discovered these remarkable photographic tools. The first lens I bought was a 35mm f/2. Believe it or not, the camera and lens together cost about $600 -- it will be at least double that these days, unfortunately. At any rate, I took this set-up with me on a trip to Washington, DC, and spent about an hour photographing near the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture. I had a roll of Ilford HP5+ in the camera and I shot the entire roll there. Here's one of my favorites from that shoot. I like the contrast in this photograph between the new architecture and the reflection of the classic architecture in the windows. I was at f/8 to test the sharpness of the lens. It did pretty well in that regard, I'd say. (Click to see the image larger.) These lens designs are all pretty long in the tooth by now and it is worth noting that they can't really compete with more modern lens designs on the technical side. I'm willing to carry that burden.

Traveling light

The Rollei 35 is a pretty great all around travel camera, in my opinion, especially if you want to travel light. It is a great 'conference camera' for those times when you'll be balancing work and pleasure. It is about as compact as a 35mm film camera can be and the lens is a plenty sharp Tessar design with a pleasant enough 40 mm focal length. The small size comes at the expense of any focusing aids, though, so the challenge is that you have to know how to guess focus or zone focus. Not that hard, but definitely practice before your trip. 

The photographs we are talking about today were taken on a conference trip to Bologna, Italy. The first shot was captured in the historical center of town during the preparations for an outdoor market. It was shot on Acros 100 film which handled the intense September sun in Italy about perfectly.

I was surprised by how much I liked Bologna. It is just gritty enough, there is plenty to photograph, and the old city is very walkable. 

Barthes's got your back...

A convenient feature of some medium format cameras like the SL66 or a Hasselblad are the interchangeable film backs. You can have a roll of black and white loaded in one back, and a roll of color in the other, for example. Whatever combination of film stocks that you want. 

Thinking about photographing a bouquet of Gerber daisies, it might seem that the obvious choice would be to capture the scene in color. To that end, one of my Rollei's film backs was loaded up with Ektar, and I do think the color image looks great. Yes, the colors are highly saturated, but not out of line.

Day of the dead...

Who can resist taking pictures of Fall foliage? The leaves of trees catch our attention throughout their life cycle, but they are perhaps most beautiful at the end of life. They can be captivating even after falling to the ground. I wonder what evolutionary advantage that might confer? Hey, let's not overthink things here. Maybe it is just a gift. Quick, grab your camera before the wind ruins the composition. 

In this case, as I often do, I reached for the Rolleiflex SL66, the 80 mm lens, and a roll of Ektar 100. Note to self: always have a roll or two of Ektar around in the Fall.