Notice More

At the time I made this exposure, I noticed the shadow play, the form -- that is obviously what caught my eye in the first place -- but I didn't really pay that much attention to the gradation of tones in the shadows. That is one of the most valuable things about a photograph to me, it freezes time and gives you a chance to notice more.

Hey Pumpkin

Are you in the Fall spirit yet? Focusing on Autumn undoubtedly will be a bit of a challenge this week as temperatures are expected to climb back into the 80s here in the Deep South. How about some pumpkins to set the mood? The massive array of squashes at the Atlanta botanical gardens was possibly the most diverse collection I’ve ever seen in one place, and quite enjoyable to photograph, too. 

The tiny but mighty Pen FT half-frame camera certainly acquitted itself well here, producing sharp and contrasty images on Ilford FP4+.  

Surprise and Delight

Photography continues to surprise and delight. I saw this composition at the botanical garden, but after developing and scanning the film, ended up thinking that the negative was actually more interesting than the positive as an image. So, in this case, the scanned negative is the final version. I've never felt that way about one of my photographs before.

Tasting notes: Olympus Pen FT, 38mm f/1.8 lens, Ilford FP4+.
 

Finding Geometry

This scene looks calm, even peaceful, but behind me I heard the unmistakable power chords and manic rhythms of heavy metal. Loud. Hoping to find a band rehearsing, I turned around. Alas, it was only a CrossFit session, the gym weirdly sandwiched between a couple of art galleries. Just a couple of folks manipulating a giant rope. Nothing like death metal to accompany an intense workout.

Good light this weekend, fellow traveler. 🤘

Divine Stallion

I’m almost certain that I was the only person shooting with black-and-white film in a half-frame camera at the Atlanta botanical gardens yesterday. Scratch that. I know I was. It was a spontaneous decision to go have lunch there. We called an audible. But I came away with a nice set of photographs, I think. And lunch was good. The absence of color and the surprising appearance of the faux origami Pegasus gives an enjoyable image.

Tasting notes: Olympus Pen FT, 38mm f/1.8 lens, Ilford FP4+.

Sufficiency

Sometimes the iPhone is good enough. I had a few minutes on my hand waiting for my wife to sign some paperwork and went for a short wander. The power connection to this old church caught my eye, so I used my phone to capture the moment. I did the black-and-white conversion in the Photos app. Sure, it’s a bit crunchy, but will have to do. It reminds me of how an acquaintance used to put the family photographs into tacky little photo books as soon as the 4x6 prints came back from the lab. She didn’t want family memories to gather dust at the bottom of a drawer somewhere.

A Place For All Your Stuff

Have you ever noticed all the self storage places dotting the landscape? The number seems to be increasing as the amount of our accumulated stuff is only going up over time. I rented one of these units once—when I moved to Berlin. Sadly, when I got back to the States I noticed that my little place had been broken into. Wonder how common that is. The burglar must have been pretty disappointed though because all that was in there was a bunch personal items of no particular value. I couldn’t even be sure what was missing. Important stuff.

Still Beautiful

According to my superficial internet 'research', the oldest living examples of the crepe myrtle are in Italy and are about 130 years old. So our examples, which are well over 50 years old by my estimation, are middle aged but still very much in the prime of life. They will probably outlast my wife and me, which is not something I want to contemplate for too long. At the moment, though, I'm more concerned with whether they will survive the current drought/deluge pattern of precipitation in the Southeast that is stressing so many trees. But for as long as they are around, they will remain excellent subjects for photography.

The Public View

Increasingly, the good views are becoming privatized and kept behind gates. No public access. Period. And so, the vast majority of us must settle for standing among the telephone poles and mud holes and appreciate nature as best we can. Of course, I could have moved a few feet to the left and cleaned up the distracting wires in Photoshop, but these days, I'm feeling much less inclined to do so.

A Thin Black Line

Back when there was no alternative to printing in the darkroom, I remember opening up a photography magazine and reading about how certain photographers would take a file to their negative carriers in order to remove a few fractions of a millimeter of metal from each side. This would allow them to print a thin black frame around their images, and was intended to be a sign that the photographer had 'gotten things right in camera'. Which of course, is kind of silly, since a post-visualizer and darkroom master like Jerry Uelsmann could have easily worked around such a simple constraint. But the thing is, sometimes a thin black line around an image just looks good, and these days such an effect can be achieved in software with a few 'button presses' even on a heavily cropped image. And with absolutely no chance of scratched negatives.

Gold Rush

At some point in your photography journey, you may start to feel that the medium really resonates as a means of expressing your thoughts, ideas, and feelings. And once that happens, you will probably start approaching the craft a little differently than you did before, a little more intently, perhaps. For me, I started noticing the connections between what I saw in abstract paintings and the things I saw around me in the built environment. Signage, urban decay, material juxtapositions, texture, that sort of thing. And, as it turns out, I am pretty sure I wasn't the only one who felt this way. Indeed, these sorts of 'urban abstracts' are pretty common these days, even turning up with increasing frequency as stock photos. And, I guess that is a genuine indication that what was at one time a rich vein of visual ideas has been pretty thoroughly mined. Be that as it may, I still think I got some interesting results.

Hope you strike gold this weekend, fellow traveller.

Van Life

I've always thought the old Ford Econoline vans from the 1960s were pretty cool looking vehicles. When I was living in LA a few decades ago, plenty of these were owned by surfers, and you would see quite a few of them parked along the side of the road near the beaches. Jacked up in the back and of course with roof racks. Not sure how many are still running after nearly sixty years, so I was pretty surprised to see this one on the side of the road in Charleston, SC a few years ago.

Getting Pretty Wild

At this time of year, the sun is pretty low in the sky starting in the middle of the afternoon. Consequently, the shadows are getting pretty wild, just in time for Halloween, I suppose. Not my favorite holiday, to be honest, Thanksgiving being my personal preference as far as the holidays are concerned. Yet, the patterns of shadows even in the most mundane places are fun to observe and photograph. Who knows, they may end up in one of my composite images... 

Unto Dust...

Often, I'll decide to keep a cool looking botanical specimen around once I've photographed it., especially if it is somewhat unique. After all, they are fun to re-photograph, and you never know if you will ever come across a better example. So, I'll seal it up and add it to the collection of dead things scattered around the studio. Unfortunately, I couldn't do that with this mushroom, as its stench was simply overpowering. So, after a few shots, I chucked in into the undergrowth from whence it came. 

Struggle

I can remember when this long leaf pine was a just a few feet tall. Over the course of about a decade or so, it has matured into a large and majestic tree. With only a single day of rain in over a month, many of the trees in the area are showing signs of struggle against the drought. It is a bit shocking. Some of the less hearty plants have already died and others are well on their way. I'm hoping this individual finds a way to survive.

 

Gnarly Crop

Have you ever actually cropped an image down to nothing and then just given up on it? By the time I finished cropping this image, I must have been down to my last few megapixels. C'est la vie sometimes. I'll just have to try photographing this subject again sometime soon. 

But Mine

As a younger person, I would never have ventured anywhere near 'the barn' or any other well known photographic or tourist landmarks. It seems I had a real aversion to such places back in the day. As I've gotten older, though, I find that my so-called standards have dropped quite a bit, and, in recent years, I have actually sought out some of the more famous spots. My touristy shots still aren't my favorite images, but I have to admit that the view of the Tetons was spectacular from this location. In fact, my favorite photograph from this day doesn't include the barn at all. Hmm, somehow younger me overlooked that possibility... The crowds weren't as bad as I feared either, and now I have a series of images of the barn I can enjoy in the privacy of my own home. No one ever need know I did the tourist thing.

Pointless Fun

Do you ever engage in a little pointless fun with your camera? Like shooting the moon... Or perhaps airplanes flying overhead? On clear autumn and winter days especially, when the humidity is low and the skies are clear, I confess that it can be mildly entertaining to photograph airplanes on their final approach into ATL. Just because. The feeling usually passes in the span of a few frames, but it never ceases to amaze me how good our equipment has become. Technically, anyway, it seems like a great time to be a photographer. 

Good light and fun, pointless and otherwise, to you this weekend, fellow traveler.

Look Up

Usually, I do my best to avoid spending time close quarters. I'm no fan of elevators, and attics tend to give me the creeps. But for some reason, I was drawn to the light inside of an abandoned garden shed like the proverbial moth to a candle. So, I gathered up all my strength and walked into the tiny space. At one point, I looked up and found several interesting abstract compositions. I captured a few images and got the hell out of there just as the walls started closing in.

Light and Form

This image is all about the light and form, certainly, but that said, I can't help thinking about the ladder. More to the point, there's no way in hell I'd want to be the person who had to climb up that thing. While I love these grain elevators, with gas so expensive, I can't really imagine driving across the country to photograph a bunch of them. It's kinda been done anyway...

Sorry, but you'll need to look at the larger image to see it without moire...

Epic, Schmepic

Make no mistake, I'm fully aware of my privileged existence on this earth plane (plane of existence, not flat earth). And, believe me, I'm good with it. Totally. The thing is, there are still plenty (mostly?) of boring moments, even in the life of a fortunate, first world human. And I don't particularly feel the need to turn my experiences up to eleven with photography. Epic, schmepic. It was a trivial, decaying little dock constructed with little care decades ago. I happened to be standing there on a quiet, beautiful morning.

Android Dreams...

Like many, I still to this day remember watching my first darkroom print, a photograph of my pet iguana, slowly emerging out of nothingness, but I also still remember seeing my first digital images appear on my computer screen in full color as if by magic. And we knew nothing about the capabilities of these little digital machines as we snapped away. I soon learned how slow the autofocus could be and discovered the joys of chroma noise. Fast forward twenty years, and it would seem as if old digicams from the turn of the century are having a bit of a moment. I suppose it makes sense that folks in their twenties feel a certain nostalgia for digicam images in the same way that those of us born in the 20th century romanticize film images. 

Tasting notes: Canon G2.

Quote Of The Day — “The Message Is A Visual One ”, Raymond Moore

‘The strange, suggestive forms of rock and sand, the brooding presence of the landscape and the almost surrealist interiors of old buildings are what provide me with visual equivalents to feeling, which I must have to justify a photograph. I am quite unable to explain why I choose particular objects in preference to others, it’s like asking a musician to explain or justify a series of notes. My concern anyway is often more with the shapes, tones and textures objects possess, rather than with any literary overtones they may contain. The message is a visual one.’

— Raymond Moore

In my experience anyway, the discussion of photographs these days is often, perhaps too often, framed in terms of concepts pertaining to written or spoken language. Narrative, referent/index, metaphor. As a counter to this kind of approach, it has been refreshing to observe that the previous generation of British landscape photographers pushed back on such literary frames. 

Tripod Worthy

Growing up in the desert that is Southern California, I suppose it is only natural that I have been fascinated with succulents most of my life. I even remember doing an experiment in my basic biology class in which I measured the rate of transpiration of a cactus. The trick there was not to allow the thorns to punch a hole in the plastic covering. To be quite honest, I prefer photographing succulents to measuring their mass over time. The specimen shown here seems to be doing quite well as evidenced by the new growth. This morning, I confess that I was simply too lazy to dig out a tripod. Over the years, I have assembled quite a collection of them, but they are buried in a storage area under my collection of camera bags.

Dendroglyphs

So, I learned a new word to describe the carvings on trees, dendroglyphs. Frankly, I think humans should either give up on carving into the bark of trees or seriously improve their dendroglyph game. Pakito? Really? If you're gonna deface a tree, bro, how about something cool that might be interesting to a passerby in a few decades? Etching your name into a tree is on the same level as getting "Mom" tattooed onto your bicep. But, I digress. I wanted to mention that I tend to favor lenses with mellow boke like the Olympus 25mm f/1.8. Will nuance and sophistication come back into vogue any time soon? 

Have a subtle weekend fellow traveller.

Slow Fall...

Down here, below the Mason-Dixon Line, fall foliage peaks about a month from now, maybe even a tad longer depending on conditions. Plenty of time to get out and look for beautiful locations. Still, there are promising signs of seasonal change all around, with many trees starting to turn yellow, adding nice color contrast where only recently everything was a mass of solid green. And, surprisingly, a few over achievers have already gone totally red. I broke out of my usual rhythm, got out into the landscape, and had this part of the lake completely to myself. On the one hand, this is a rather postcard-y photograph; but on the other, it is a pretty remote location and this may be one of the only times this particular scene has ever been documented.

Abstract Intent

The term 'abstract' as applied to photographs has always seemed a bit problematic to me. Whereas many abstract paintings are completely non-representational, in photography the abstraction often has to do with ambiguity of scale or the like, so an abstract photograph can still be completely representational. More to the point, I think the intent of the abstract painter and abstract photographer can be completely different.

Tappan Zee Bridge (1955-2017)

I have some thoughts about the Tappan Zee bridge. You see, I was married more or less in its shadow, just out of frame to the left at Lyndhurst. Honestly, I much prefer the original to the current version, which I find overblown. Not that I am a Luddite, as I really do like the improvements that have been made to the little park in Tarrytown from where this photograph was made. Now that the old bridge has been demolished, this image has become much more important to me, like the portrait of a departed relative.

Small. Package. Good. Things.

Sometimes, good things really do come in small packages. Like the tiny Olympus 45mm f/1.8 lens. I've always enjoyed the rendering produced by this cheap and cheerful golfball-sized little lens. Here, in this shot taken on the Appalachian Trail, the focus was on the nearest post. The aperture was f/5.6 and the fall off in focus is just what I was looking for to emphasize the atmospheric perspective. I do rather wish I'd left some more space at the top, but, not to worry, I could easily fix that in Photoshop should MOMA express interest. 

Shades of Silver Oxide

A few months ago I made a batch of photographic emulsion and had some silver nitrate left over. Why waste it? So I played around with it a little bit and ended up doing an informal material study, using my digital camera to capture the action. 

 

Old School

 

Personally, I find these old chain link backstops kind of nostalgic and a real treat to photograph. I would visit the ones in this ball field pretty regularly up until about two years ago when they were removed as part of a huge renovation project. Where five baseball fields once stood there is now but one. Of course, soccer is much more popular these days than baseball is, so the change makes sense. This image was captured using an old Sigma DP1 camera. Believe it or not, I learned about the Foveon sensor from an old Art History professor, and picked up the DP1 as a cheap way to test the waters. Me like. These days I keep a sweet sdQuattro in my collection and I have my fingers crossed that the folks at Sigma keep producing new cameras.