Trash day

 

The trash is picked up on Thursday morning in my neighborhood, which means that folks take all their trash, recycling, and Spring cleaning to the curb on Wednesday. I saw these two very cute little scooters on an afternoon walk, and thought to myself that I would have totally gotten one for my son if they had existed back when he was growing up. The rounded design and special footpads reminded me of the Flintstones. The pickers start making their rounds in the afternoon, and these two little guys were snapped up before the sun went down. I know that because I went back later to photograph them again, but they were gone. Speaking of pleasant designs, I made this photograph using the Olympus XA2 point and shoot camera.

Getting to your vision

I think I came pretty close to achieving my vision with this image. In early Spring I'm always struck by the bright Camellia flowers that pile up under the well manicured trees that dot so many front yards around here. The fallen blossoms, red in this case, define a precise circle on the ground under the tree. My pre-visualized image was in color, but I ended up preferring the black and white version. Red is such a difficult color to get right. In the interest of full disclosure, I used a faux IR treatment to darken the color of the petals and lighten the leaves for better contrast. There was a time when I would never have tried something like this, much less cop to it if I had secretly given it a go. Thankfully, I'm much more open to post-visualization these days. The image was shot on the Pentax KP using the older version of the 35mm f/2.8 macro lens. It is one hell of a nice lens. It has the exact kind of mellow bokeh that suits my taste. I know this lens was designed for digital cameras, but I'm itching to see how it renders on film. Stay tuned.

High wire act

I was out for a morning walk not too long ago, when I came across this scene. I really liked how the shadow from a fence just out of frame was projected against a similar fence running horizontally through the image. And, I enjoy how the shadow gets more out of focus toward the bottom of the image. It was a fun shot, not striving for the status of high art, or anything. Just a record of a small visual experience and a train of thought. I like that! Anyway, I was using a Contax RTS II with a 50mm f/1.7 Zeiss lens attached. This particular model of Contax is a very fine aperture priority camera and a real joy to use. It kind of reminds me of a modern day Fujifilm digital camera. Out of curiosity, I did a little research on the RTS II and discovered that it was introduced all the way back in 1982, nearly 40 years ago. Nice results from a middle aged camera!

A blustery day

The published weather forecast this morning was for 'a blustery day' which made me smile a little. The past month has been quite rainy -- to the point of annoyance, really -- but, as a result, the azaleas and dogwoods are currently in full bloom. The dogwoods, in particular, are a good indicator of the amount of rain that has fallen. Luckily, I was able to compose, focus and capture this image during a lull between gusts of wind. Dogwood flowers can be interesting to photograph in color, but the dead-leaf-brown tones in the background of this image did not appeal. Hence, the monochrome treatment. I used the 21mm f/3.2 lens on the Pentax KP. It about as wide a perspective as I feel comfortable with, but it is a very fine little lens indeed.

Remains of the day

I had a boss once who told me that he would frequently go on long drives for pure relaxation. If he had a crappy day at work -- and, being the man in charge of a large operation, he had many crappy days -- he would announce that he was going to leave early and take a long drive to chill out. Now, it seems like there are always too many other people on the road to relax very much, if at all. Which makes it easier than ever for me to relinquish control and be the passenger. Car photography is probably one of the major sub-genres of photography, and we've all gotten a few good shots out the window of a moving vehicle. We were driving through Marin County on our way up the coast of California when I made this photograph. I remember wanting to capture a silhouette of a semi trailer in the distance and the disk of the sun burning through the fog. I used my trusty Canon AE-1 for this one.

The joys and sorrows of using really old photographic equipment

 

There is something very appealing about the old folding cameras from the 1930s through the 1950s as exemplified by the Zeiss Ikon Nettar cameras. Small enough to carry with you on a lunchtime walk or day trip, excellent optics, large 6x6 cm negatives, affordable. The cell phone cameras of their day, I reckon. I have two versions, one with a relatively slow f/6.8 lens and one with a much fancier 80mm f/2.8. They both make sharp and contrasty photographs in good light. It never ceases to amaze me how good the Zeiss optics are, especially considering this technology is two or three generations removed from the present day. That said, both cameras have intermittent issues with film transport and film flatness, and that is really the sorrow part of the equation. Those tears are just part and parcel of working with a camera that was perhaps purchased new around the time of WWII. In a similar vein, I have an old large format lens that needs to be exercised for a few minutes prior to exposing any film with it, just to increase the odds that the shutter doesn't stick open and ruin the shot. 

I'm expecting poorish light this weekend, and hope it's better wherever you may be.

Luscious colors

A couple of years ago, we were wandering around Ponce City Market in ATL and came across a space that was being prepped for renovation. I fell in love with the patina on these old columns. Film is the perfect medium for these type of scenes, in my opinion. I exposed for the level of ambient light I wanted to record in the main space, and I knew that at least some information would be retained in the highlight areas of the windows. The final image successfully captured the feeling I had at the time. By now, the space is probably fully occupied, but I have not had the chance to go back to see what things look like. My gear that day was the Leica R8 and the last version of the 35mm Summicron-R. 

Riding the trailing edge of digital technology... and loving it.

 

The Pentax KP digital camera is at the end of its run, and now costs about half of its original list price, which is why I now own one. With most digital cameras produced since about 2015 being pretty solid performers, I've grown fond of riding the trailing edge of the adoption curve, as there is virtually no risk. But then again, my favorite camera, the Rolleiflex SL66, is over 50 years old, and I still enjoy shooting it as often as possible. The KP has a few interesting tricks up its sleeve, some that I was aware of, such as pixel shift, and a couple of others discovered on my own. For example, while many digital cameras have a multiple exposure feature, what is interesting about its implementation on the KP is that you can combine up to 2000 images in one exposure. That is about a factor of 100 greater than any of my other cameras, so, naturally I wanted to see what I could come up with. The image above is a combination of 112 exposures in camera. I pointed at a grouping of trees and tried not to move too much. It is an interesting, painterly result that I couldn't have achieved with any of my other equipment, so I am intrigued to push further.

Creep

I came across this display in a curio shop we discovered on a day trip about a year ago. I was carrying the Leicaflex SLmot camera from the 1960s with an old version of the 50mm Summicron mounted on the front. It was a cloudy and dim day, and I had a cheap, fast black and white film loaded up. The SLmot sure is one heavy old camera, and I was not quite able to hold still enough when I made this exposure. The motion blur bugged me quite a bit at time I developed the negatives, but I also thought the blurriness suited the creepy subject matter. It was just a question of finding the best treatment in post production -- I had to live with the image a while, I guess. I'm happy enough with this version of the image. There is something about old dolls with their porcelain complexions and black holes for eyes -- very creepy stuff. Right up there with merry-go-round ponies and ventriloquist dummies on the horror scale. Anyway, I like the way the store owner arranged the disembodied legs below the head. The SLmot is quite a lot of fun to shoot, actually, and given its weight, you get a nice calorie burn as well. I've never used it with the motor drive, which would really up the intensity of the workout. The motor drive version of the Leica R cameras have the self timers deleted, which makes them look especially cool, in my view. According to my research, the SLmot is the rarest of all of the Leica R cameras, with only a few thousand having been made. 

Double trouble

 

This double fence has always amused me. My best guess is that the owners had a dog and decided to enclose their yard with a fence. The giant hunk of granite presented a bit of a problem, though. It was too large and too expensive to move, yet too close to the road to build around. So, the decision was made to build the fence over the bolder, so that not one square inch of backyard real estate would need to be sacrificed. The unintended consequence was that the dog could clamber onto the boulder, reducing the effective height of the fence by nearly half and making it much easier to escape the yard. Clearly, the simplest response was to add a second fence to the first one. This strategy obviously worked. Problem solved. Pentax KP, 35mm f/2.8 lens, converted to black and white. I'm really enjoying this camera, which will probably be the subject of a dedicated post one day.

Fun with the PEN F film camera in Birmingham, Ala.

A few years ago we were seriously considering moving to Birmingham, Ala. Ultimately, things didn't work out, but on the positive side, we got to know the city pretty well over the course of numerous visits. Honestly, it is a bit of a hidden gem as far as mid-sized cities are concerned. In particular, I enjoyed walking around Railroad Park, which has undergone a remarkable transformation in recent years. On the day this pair of photographs were made, I was carrying the Olympus PEN F half-frame film camera with the 38mm f/1.8 lens. I was shooting on Fujifilm Acros 100 and exposing by the seat of my pants. With its superfine grain structure and exposure latitude, Acros is a good film to pair with the meter-less PEN F. I'm happy to say that the city was visually interesting and I had no trouble clicking off all 72 exposures on a single visit. 

F/4 and be there

 

I was walking from the kitchen to the sofa with a cup of coffee this morning when I spotted a pleasing composition out of the corner of my eye. I enjoyed noticing how the line formed by the stem of the daffodil continued on to the top edge of the red chair in the background. There's more about the composition that I am fond of, but that was the trigger. So, after setting down the mug, I grabbed my camera and framed up this shot. The widest aperture available to me was f/4 so I used an ISO of 1000. I wanted to separate the foreground flower from the background without obliterating it entirely. The modest aperture allowed the natural properties of the lens to express themselves, so to speak. This is a pleasing still life shot, and years hence, it will remind me of a fine early Spring morning back in 2021 when I felt a twinge of optimism, despite everything.

Another, more pragmatic, thought popped into my head... Just how fast does a lens have to be now that we are living in the age of five figure ISOs? I went for an evening walk recently and, just for grins, shot a set of images at an ISO of 40K. The thing is, they looked really good to me, no more offensive in terms of graininess from film images on P3200 exposed at EI = 1000. I used the Pentax KP and the 20-40mm zoom lens here. It is a real sweet set up.

Simple pleasures, nothing more...

This image, somewhat to my surprise, turned out to be my favorite frame from the other day. I was shooting a roll of Ilford Pan F+ using the Rolleiflex SL66 and the 120mm f/5.6 S-Planar lens. Pan F+ has always been a bit of a crap shoot film for me. Often, at least in my hands, the negatives come out too thin for my liking. I've taken to overexposing this film a little, but without pulling the development. On this particular day, the stars must have been in alignment because I got twelve good negatives. For this shoot, I was trying to get close up images of textures such as tree bark. I thought the image shown here was going to be too flat to hold my interest, but I found much to engage with in the final result, and I thought the modest split toning I applied suited the negative. 

After rain most of the week, I'm looking forward to better light this weekend. I hope you find good light as well.

At close of day

As a counterpoint to the Irish poets featured the past couple of days, let's hop over to Wales for a visit with Dylan Thomas this morning. I saw this graffito scrawled on an outdoor chalkboard at a nearby university and decided it would make a fun photograph. It was shot using a Leica R6 using a 35 mm lens and Bergger Panchro 400 film. I've sent this image to friends as a birthday card numerous times. I've often wondered why a college student would chose this particular poem of Thomas's, as it seems like more of an old man's poem, at least at first blush. Then again, maybe it was a creaky old professor raging against the dying of the light who snuck out into the good night to leave his mark. If so, it was probably the most radical thing he'd done in 30 years. He must have felt like a total badass.

A branch snapped off...

This morning I heard a loudish thunk coming from the kitchen. I thought an animal might have gotten in somehow. But it was only a large dead branch that had fallen under the weight of the water from last night's rain. I saw the image of the still barren trees reflected darkly in the marble countertop. On top of everything else, my brother had just texted me a poem by Eavan Boland, from which: "A dead tree. The future. What does not bear fruit. Or thinking of." 

In the winter, it is sometimes hard to tell the living and the dead trees apart, but then the first spring rains come to prune the dead branches.

Narcissus's view

According to Seamus Heaney,

"To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity."

I don't know if his words were meant as a warning, but I've grown to distrust and even disdain such bold declarations. I will walk beside the spring and gaze where I please. There are plenty of interesting things to see in the water other than your own reflection. I've been re-reading Ishiguro's 'Remains of the Day'. He's got a totally different take on dignity.

Savoring a slower pace with an aging camera

Last year, I sent my Rolleiflex SL66 in for a clean, lubrication, and repair service. It came back a few months later working much more smoothly, but still not perfectly. I mean, it's a 60 year old camera that has been used extensively; there's only so much that can be done. I can't help feeling that our time together is limited, and that at some point, the camera will freeze up and become a display piece. That being said, I don't mind working with broken cameras just so long as they are not too broken. I have an old Japanese rangefinder camera that needs to have its lens twisted hard to the right before shooting with it. You just have to be aware of the quirks. So, I'm pretty sure I'll be using the Rollei for many years to come. Still, I've been making a point to enjoy the process every time I go out to shoot. This weekend, I exposed a roll of Ilford Pan F+ and got several decent negatives. The image above was an 8 second exposure at f/32. I've been observing this tree for a number of years. The ivy is a new arrival on the scene. In the woodland, drama unfolds at a much slower pace. The old Rollei was more than up for the task.

An invitation to linger

 

Over the past year, I've made photographs every day, many of them on walks around the local area. I've shot on film, and employed various flavors of digital capture. I've used fancy lenses and no lenses at all. I've done a lot of work in the studio, and in the darkroom. I've dabbled with manipulating physical prints and mangling images in software. It has been a challenge at times to find new ways to see my local environment, and oddly, it has required that I slow down in my process of observing and thinking about where to point the camera. I'd like to believe that this process has improved the quality of my observational skills. My hope is that the next time I travel a bit further afield, I will return with better images, with a deeper personal imprint. 

Fade to black

Our house was designed in the middle of the last century and, as such, has many large windows. During the day, the windows make the house feel more expansive, with the views of the landscape experienced as an extension of the living space. At night, though, things can get a little dicey. The scariest option would have to be the use of drapes, because that would give the impression (at least to me) of being alive inside a casket. There will be time enough for that in due course, and in the mean time, the thought of being buried alive is not that pleasant. The next option is to leave off the drapes entirely, but that leads to the condition of having to stare into a void of blackness at night, as if the house were perched on a cliff, about to topple into the sea. The solution was to install uplighting on several of the trees in our yard. This acknowledges the evening without being as disorienting as the other options. It is also quite interesting photographically because the lack of ambient illumination allows you to study how the artificial lighting works. I enjoy creeping around the yard at night photographing our trees. Why our crepe myrtles are so freakishly shaped is a story for another day. The image above was made with the Sigma dp Quattro. I find the Foveon images work well in black and white.

Too perfect?

 

I grew up believing that there were two categories of leaf, alive and dead. But then, a few months ago I found out about skeleton leaves. Somehow, the algorithm used by an online shopping service determined that I might be interested, and, just like that, a packet of etched and dried leaves was recommended to me for purchase. I guess deep down I'm pretty shallow, because, in fact, the algorithm was right -- I thought they might indeed be interesting to photograph. In the end, though, they were not that engaging as subjects and I soon lost interest. Just the other day, I was walking, as is my habit, and noticed a magnolia leaf on the sidewalk that appeared to be almost the same color as cement. Upon closer inspection, I realized it was a skeleton. The naturally occurring version is far less perfect than the ones you buy online, with stains, dirt and other flaws. I'm not sure what caused the circular mark on this skeleton, but to me it is the most interesting feature of the leaf.

I hope you have good light this weekend.

Transitions are interesting

The topography of the built environment is in a constant state of change, but the rate of that change is usually so slow that we don't notice. Until we observe that what was once a park has evolved into a strip mall while we were on vacation, or what was once tennis courts for adults has become a playground for children. I think it is the in between states that are the most interesting from a photographic point of view. Anyway, I still cannot figure out what is going on here, I just see a great deal of dirt being moved around. But I know for certain that the landscape will never look exactly like this again.

Ready for Spring (edited)

After writing this post, my wife let me know last night that the original color image (below) was kind of meh, and requested something a little more 'artistic'. So, I've added an image captured on Kodak XX film using the Nikon FM2 and the 105 mm f/2.5 lens. This is a close up of tulip magnolia blooms, so it fits. I dig it and hope you do as well.

The original post follows:

Damn it, why do I bother reading the NYT first thing in the morning? Now I'm feeling angst about being at the very end of the line for a COVID vaccine. It isn't enough to make me want to be over 65, but I am not really looking forward to the chaos when they open things up to all adults. In the meantime, I am doing my best to appreciate the signs of Spring arriving. We went for an early walk this morning and came across a lovely tulip magnolia with a river birch in the background. I shot this image on an old Fujifilm X-E2 with a 35 mm f/2 lens attached. I'm rather fond of a number Fujifilm lenses, starting with the one on the GA645Zi film camera I own. But, I'm not so much in love with using their digital cameras for some reason, even though the images are definitely super sweet. So, the X-E2 is a cheap and cheerful way to be able to use the wonderful 35 mm lens! One other nice feature that can be found on many Fuji cameras (though it wasn't needed today) is an on-camera flash (just like the GA645Zi) that is just spot on. I set the flash compensation to -2/3 stop and am totally covered. 

Plus ça change?

I've noticed scenes like this at several strip malls over the years. A big heavy metal set of mail boxes for all of the businesses. And inevitably, there is some rebel who leaves a key in the lock, presumably so they don't have to worry about having to remember where they put the mailbox key. The first time I ever noticed this phenomenon, I took the initiative to remove the key and place it inside the mail box, assuming it had been left there by mistake. I can be slow on the uptake sometimes, but I soon figured out what was really going on. Well, for this photograph, I was drawn to how the beat up mailbox unit paired with the dirty stucco wall. The composition was pleasant enough in a Lewis Baltzian sort of way, and the scene appeared kind of timeless to me. The photograph could have been made in 1971 or 2021, and that left me feeling a little unsettled. This image was shot on the Santa film I got from Finland using a Leica R9 and a 50 mm Summilux in 2021. 

Falling short

 

February is the month when the camellias are at their peak around here. The varieties that people plant in their yards must be bred to produce a ton of blooms, because the bushes are heavy with them. And when it rains, as if often does in February, the flowers tend soak up a lot of water and fall to the ground, leaving a ring of intense color around the base of the plant. The image of a ring of colored flowers surrounding a dense green mass of leaves was in the back of my mind on a recent walk around the neighborhood. I suppose that was my pre-visualized concept of the photograph I wanted to make. But, in practice, I fell a bit short of executing this concept due to problems with the background. If I could just make the damn house disappear... Then I noticed how a closer view of the fallen blooms contrasted nicely with some bright green moss on the ground. That was my Plan B. I like the result well enough, but I wonder if I should just create something in software that would line up better with what I was imagining that day before the walk.

In praise of boutique film stocks

To be completely honest, I am a bit of a sucker for weird films, unusual development chemistries, and oddball photographic processes. So, when I read about an ISO 1 black and white reversal film, I was unable to resist the temptation to pick up a couple of rolls to experiment with. Before the advent of digital imaging and the renaissance of film photography, a film stock with an ISO rating of 1 (yes, one) was not something I would generally ever reach for. These were specialized emulsions for specific applications. But these days, some of these old stocks are being sold as what you might call 'boutique' films. 

In bright sunlight, you'll need a shutter speed of 1 sec at f/16, meaning that you'll need to work on a tripod or use a wide aperture lens. I decided to load up a roll of this film for a relaxing photowalk on a sunny day. I gave a little extra exposure, working at f/1.2 and 1/30 sec, and used whatever was nearby to steady the camera. The film was developed in standard b/w chemistry and yielded a positive image. The smokey character and cool tones of the emulsion is pretty typical of the results you'll see. A downside is that the film backing is a dust magnet. The image was shot on 35 mm film in the Canon F-1 with the 50 mm f/1.2 L lens, and cropped square. Exploring the obscure corners of the medium is fun, like finding a great neighborhood restaurant way off the beaten path.

 
Bon appetit...

Dreamscapes

This obviously is just anecdotal, but I've noticed a loose correlation between periods when my photography is progressing well, or at least I am not dissatisfied with things, and my tendency to remember my dreams. The dreams I remember tend to be monochromatic and very low fidelity. I also tend not to remember the narrative or logic of the dream. I usually wake up with one blurry, grainy, monochromatic image in my head, like the one above. While it isn't a photograph of a dream, it is a photograph that looks like the kind of thing I remember from a dream, a dream fragment or dreamscape. I was using a Leica reflex camera and a 135 mm lens. The film was Lomo Berlin 400 and I pushed it one stop. By the way, I lived in Berlin when I was younger, and that nostalgia is the main reason I bought 10 rolls of this stuff. My personal suspicion is that it is an expired movie stock, but that is because of the relatively high levels of fog you see when you develop it. It would have to say that it is a nice film for dreamscape work. Which reminds me, one time when I was living in Berlin, my brother came to visit. He shot some 8 mm or 16 mm movies and then blew up individual frames to about 11x14 inches. The images looked similar to today's image. Perhaps he was channeling Guy Debord and was drifting his way through a new city.

Intermittent fasting

I was doing pretty well at intermittent fasting until the pandemic came along, and I, together with pretty much everyone else, became interested in making my own sourdough bread. Early on in the experiment, I got into the habit of cooking some of the starter each morning as a 'pancake' or fritter. You know, so as not be wasteful. I started by sprinkling some green onion on top, which was certainly delicious, and things escalated quickly from there. Soon I was noshing on the equivalent of eggs Benedict each morning, comforting myself with carbs. It was time for an intervention, so I've ended the fritter festival, and am getting back into a healthier eating pattern of two meals a day. And I've been taking a broader view of the cheese grater, seeing it as a means to study lighting, as well as a tool to shred vegetables. This evening, however, I am planning to use it to grate cheese for a pizza, albeit a pizza with a cauliflower crust.

Enjoy your weekend.

Old man photography

I have been enjoying my new old book on the life and photography of Aaron Siskind (Pleasures and Terrors by Chiarenza). Turns out that later in his career Siskind created a body of work based on photographs of dead leaves, a series of low key black and white images he referred to as 'old man photography'. Do we photograph dead or dying subjects as symbols of our own mortality and do these subjects tend to come to the fore in our work as we get older? Or are the objects themselves simply inherently more interesting? This daffodil has been sitting in a vase filled with water for several weeks and I've been watching it change over time. It appears to be suspended somewhere between life and death. Photographically, it is in a good place; biologically, not so much. 

Comfort scrolling

You hear an awful lot these days about doom scrolling, and perhaps you get sucked into that miserable vortex from time to time as we all seemingly do, but what about comfort scrolling? You know, searching out and enjoying web content that is interesting, informative, and also, in some way, comforting. I happened upon one such item the other day, an article about using advanced X-ray imaging and computational techniques to study the historical practice of letter locking, an early form of encryption. I went to the original scientific paper that was published in the journal Nature Communications to take a deeper dive... I decided to have some fun and try out one of the lock folds myself. I started with the most transparent paper I could find in the studio, a thin sheet of Kozu printmaking paper, and folded it according to one of the examples in the article. I then placed it on a light box and made the image above. I think I might play around a little more with this concept. And, if it doesn't pan out, perhaps I'll post one of my experiments in the mail to a friend. Who knows, getting an old school letter in the mail might actually be comforting to them.

Veni, vidi, vici...

On a trip to Rome in the first decade of this century, I became a bit obsessed with photographing the oculus of the Pantheon. I returned several times under a variety of weather conditions to shoot and re-shoot the scene. My goal was to make a single exposure that retained detail both in the sky and in the dome. Unfortunately, the sensor in the digital camera I owned at the time was not at all up to the task. Upon returning to my home computer, I photoshopped an image of the sky (including a bird, of course) onto an image of the inside of the dome. Mission accomplished. With today's camera sensors, I probably could easily achieve my goal of capturing sufficient dynamic range in one click. Would the final result be any better? At any rate, several years later, I was wandering the streets of downtown Chicago and saw some conceptual art on display. The experience triggered the memory of my Roman adventure, so I made a snap with my phone. It occurs to me that what I would really like to do is visit the Pantheon during a snow storm.

896 millimeters

During August, 2017, I was determined to make a set of technically decent photographs of the solar eclipse. Of course, I wanted some images to share with family and for posterity, but as someone who shoots mainly non-technical and abstract images, I also wanted to demonstrate to myself that I could still 'work with a camera'. I remember listening to an interview with a well-known photographic artist who had just had a large exhibition of photograms in which he said that he was really looking forward to his next project that would definitely involve 'working with a camera'. The sequence of images above were shot on a Canon APS camera using a 400 mm lens and a 1.4x teleconverter. The images turned out far better than I had hoped, but when I showed them to a friend of mine who is a physicist, he was totally nonplussed. Regardless, it is amazing that we can do astrophotography in our backyards these days.