A Strange Lens From The Past

My most recent online auction adventure started with the purchase of a set of old photography magazines (mine are all from the 1970s) and ended with the acquisition of a funky old lens. The magazine was called simply 'Camera' and was published in Switzerland. I thought I had heard of most of the famous magazines, but obviously not. The artwork is interesting certainly, especially the early work of some now famous photographers, but my immediate fascination was with the advertising. For instance, I saw an ad for a Sigma 135mm lens with a special 'pan-focus' setting of f/64. A pan-focus, telephoto lens, hence the label Pantel. Hehe, I get it. So, I decided to see if any were for sale. Sure enough, I found a mint condition copy for $30. It is a nice enough chunk of glass and metal. While I haven't had the opportunity to test the pan-focus function yet, the lens isn't too bad as a regular imager. 

Dog Days

This photograph reminds me that soon enough the humidity will drop some, and along with it, the temperatures. It was taken in early September a few years ago. It's that in between time of the year when you might feel the hint of a cool breeze in the morning but you know it is still going to get miserably hot and humid later in the day. And once the humidity drops a little, my photographs will start to look better, too. 

Saying Goodbye To Summer

It sounds cliche but this summer really has sped by. We've got plenty more hot temperatures in store, of course, but as far as the calendar is concerned, time moves forward. Finito, summer.  At one point, I owned an old BMW just a few years older than this one, but I ended up selling it to a young man with good taste. Unfortunately, a few months later I heard that a tree fell on it and totaled the vehicle. A real shame.

Leaf And Petal

I can still remember the cold winter morning when I developed this roll of film. My morning cup of coffee had not yet kicked in and so I did not dial in the temperature of my developer very precisely. The cold solutions led to technically crappy negatives, but at least there was some silver to work with. I posted the image to Flickr and to my surprise it was featured in Explore and I got more love for that photo than almost any other. One thing I've learned over the years is that you just never know how things will be received.

 

Photographic Transformation

I walked past this scene literally dozens of times, and literally thought nothing of it. Literally. This was just a practice shot made with by beloved Rollei 35 camera. In the end, the photo looked better to my eye than the thing itself, which happens from time to time. Anyway, this mundane little scene doesn't exist any longer. A house was sold, new owners moved in and re-did things to their own bling-y tastes. Bigger is better is no passing phase, lemme tell ya. It will fall to another photographer to immortalize the current state of affairs.

Sometimes You Have To Take A Punch

Over time, I have accumulated a number of shots taken on the streets that I remain rather fond of. Little more than travel snaps perhaps, but personally meaningful nonetheless. For instance, I took this photograph in Rome going on 20 years ago now. I still remember that my weasel-faced boss at the time tried to ding me in my annual review for taking a week off to travel to Italy. So, this photograph of two people reading the newspaper for free on the street also triggers memories of my former boss's dick move. Right back at ya, jackass! In the work-life dynamic, I generally always choose life. Generally speaking, I'm pleased with the return on investment.

Gravity, Is It Really The Law?

According to Physics, plants grow in a gravitational field. Sounds simple enough, right? In practice, though, it apparently ain't that simple; otherwise I would not have had so much trouble getting the orientation of this photograph to look natural. Anyway, these trees all survived Katrina and it was a pleasure to stand beneath them and enjoy the shade provided.

Good light and stable gravity to you this weekend, fellow traveler.

Bamboo, It's Complicated

The house we live in was overrun with bamboo when we first moved in. It cost more than a few dollars to get it back under control; after all, it had essentially been untended since the 1950s, when I guess it was trendy to have bamboo in your yard. It's an invasive species, that, along with kudzu, has done pretty well in the Deep South. My father had bamboo in the yard of one of our houses and it almost got him into a lawsuit. The 'boo pictured here was seen near Nashville, TN.

Tasting notes: Leica R6, 35mm Summicron-R, Portra 400.

Window Seat

Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy driving. At least in principle, if not always in practice. It's just that the conditions for driving enjoyment have narrowed over the years. Fundamentally, it is because the number of cars on the road has increased exponentially while our infrastructure has followed a weak linear trajectory. Once you are comfortable giving up control and letting someone else drive, there are photographic benefits of sitting in the passenger seat. Once in a while you may even get a decent shot out the window of the moving car. 

Light In August?

Back in Faulkner's time, there'd be a couple days in the middle of August when the quality of the light would suddenly change, becoming more luminous and giving the first hint that Fall was about to arrive. Hence the title of the novel. If the book were written today, the title might have to be 'Light In September' because in August, 2023 the light in Mississippi is just plain harsh.

Mysterioso

Funny how you can go through life never knowing that certain things even exist. Like a museum designed by Frank Gehry in the State of Mississippi. But there you go, you learn something new every day. Still, and all, I'd never move to Biloxi, even though it is a place romanticized in my memory by a novel I read as a child, Walker Percy's 'The Moviegoer'. How I ever learned about that book as a kid growing up in Los Angeles, I can no longer remember. Not to mention how I ended up living down here in the Deep South for most of my adult life. Mysterioso.

It's All Relative

We chatted with a couple of fishermen on the pier in Biloxi, who, when we told them where we live, said, "Y'all are a couple of Northerners"! To them, anyone who lives north of I-10 is from the north. Looking on the map, I realize I've spent a good fraction of my life between I-10 and I-20. Barely a northerner, I'd say.

Why Do You Photograph?

Why go for the typical perspectives when the weird and quirky are just around the corner? That's my approach anyway. I've always enjoyed the process of discovering what is interesting to me. Throughout my life, I've tended to use optical devices to guide me, to help me understand the multifaceted aspects of the world around me, especially the materiality of it. 

Wishing You Good Light

A friend of ours is in a big group show and it turns out that the opening reception was down in Biloxi, MS last evening. Why, oh why, do they schedule these events for the hottest day of the summer? Today it got up into triple digits for a little while, and upon reflection, I have to admit it was far better to be in an air-conditioned art gallery than wandering the streets. So maybe that is their strategy after all.

I haven't had a chance to go through my photographs yet, so today's image is taken from the archive. 

Good light to you fellow traveler, however hot it may be where you are this weekend.

It's Not Complicated

I find that folks tend to assume that artistic decisions are logical and make sense. That it all fits together like a theory of everything in Physics. But sometimes choices are merely practical, like with this image. You see, my camera messed up the white balance of this scene (or perhaps I pressed the wrong button by mistake) and the lovely golden hour light I experienced was neither lovely nor golden in the photograph I captured. I liked the complicated and busy composition, so I went ahead and converted the image to black and white. Simple as that.
 

Art and Work

I captured this scene when the Panasonic LX-3 was a new camera and the Georgia Aquarium was a new venue. A good while ago, in other words. Back then, I knew I wanted to shoot more seriously, but I still needed a full time day job to pay the bills. It was a long slog, but I did finally figure out how to shoot and do art full time. I keep telling myself that Hans Hofmann did some of his best work in his seventies. Meaning, I've got some time, still.

Work Life Balance

Going through my photo archive, I can kind of gauge how much of a toll work was taking on me at a given time in my life. For example, I noticed that about 15 years ago, I made fewer than 1000 images in one year, the least ever. My nadir, my worst slump. That must have been about when my working life was demanding the most of my time and energy. Or, at least before I got better at finessing the work-life balance thing. Like learning to drive, it takes a while to learn how to manage your time. Work will take it all, if you let it. Twenty years of schooling and they put you on the day shift as professor Dylan once said...

The Jerk

I was keen to walk a little further down this road to see if the farm in the distance was in any way photogenic, but an aggressive four-legged creature convinced me to change my plans. As soon as I got to this position, the dog seen in this photograph made an appearance and let it be known pretty unambiguously that I was not to proceed any further. I had no interest in challenging this fellow's authority, as I could tell he was quite serious and appeared to be more than willing to bite. Some other time in a car.  

Last Days Of A Certain Kind Of Gear Talk

About two years ago, I made a pretty systematic and concerted effort to quit wasting so much time on the internet, by avoiding as much of the technical yada yada pertaining to photography as possible. I haven't looked back or missed any of it, to be honest. I still use the interwebs, of course, but for other things. The technical side of photography appears to be essentially a solved problem at this point -- to me at any rate. I've enjoyed spending more time actually making art. Of course, I'm still interested in the performance of my cameras and lenses, and I still hone my skills and futz around like a good nerd. The diptych above is comprised of a digital image from a micro four thirds camera and a film image from the Rolleiflex SL66.    

Yellow Shack

I guess this photograph harkens back to the work of William Christenberry. It is roughly in that documentary tradition any way. That being said, Mr. Christenberry probably would have framed it a bit looser. Not wanting to stand in the middle of a busy road, I decided the tighter crop worked well enough. For some of these more documentary kinds of images, you can get away with some things. This structure is still around, so maybe I should shoot it again, and bring a wider lens this time. That's another lesson from Christenberry, go back and photograph a subject again and again over time.

Best Camera

By now it is little  more than a tired cliché, but, as the saying goes, 'the best camera is the one you have with you'. The best camera I had with me on this particular day a couple of years ago was an IR converted Canon 5D that I picked up for about $200. One of my pandemic experiments. The only lens I owned for it was a Lensbaby of some sort. So, when I came across this old church, I pulled over and made some photographs with the best camera and lens combo in my possession. They are actually reasonable shots I suppose, but if I'm honest, I've soured some on the blurred out look. And through the process, I learned something else about myself: I ain't in love IR photography either. So, not too long after this shot was made, I sold the camera on. The church was torn down, too, and townhomes erected in its place. So it goes...

It is raining heavily at the moment, buthHere's too good light this weekend, fellow traveler.
 

Time Travel

She didn't talk about it at all with us kids, or maybe I've just forgotten about it, but my mother journeyed to Japan before she had children or was even married. I think the experience made a significant impression on her, because she remained interested in Japanese art her whole life. So it was interesting to visit this department store in Tokyo and experience some of the same things, like this giant sculpture, that she did so long ago.

A Matter Of Perspective

Over the years, I've heard any number of suggestions about changing one's perspective in order to get a more interesting photograph. Out of all of them, the two that have tended to work best for me are, 'Look up!', and 'Look behind you!' During my fat years, I avoided shooting from a low position as much as possible. I'm going through a thin period at the minute, so perhaps I should shoot as many shots as I can from ground level before I hulk out again...

Get To Work!

Late summer is always the time I struggle most with photography. It is hot, humid, and hazy, and I find myself longing for other kinds of weather to go shooting. Longing for benches from which I can ponder. Like this one, which unfortunately doesn't exist any longer. I guess it was too much work to maintain, so now it's gone. Anyway, I need to accept the crappy weather, and drag my butt out of bed early one day this week and just get to work.

Bite Me

To be honest, the studio cat and I collaborated on this photograph. He killed this insect, presented it to me... and I shot it. I have an old microscope objective that can be used for macro photography and that is how I got so close. The really amazing thing about this creature, to me anyway, is the colors. These are straight out of the camera.

Noticing Things Later

Most photographers have had the experience of coming home, looking at that day's images, and being surprised by something interesting or humorous lurking in the background of one of the frames. In the case of this simple photograph of a Gerber daisy, I was a little dismayed to discover that many of the petals had crease marks on them, something I didn't noticed when I picked them out at the supermarket. In fact, it is pretty difficult to find good flower specimens to photograph if perfection is what you are after. They get banged up pretty good on their journey to market.

Look Down

Sometimes all you need to do in order to break out of a rut is to point your camera in a different direction. In this case, I was looking down and noticing the calligraphic qualities of some of the marks on the street. This little series reminded me of the work Aaron Siskind, one of the first 'art' photographers I discovered way back in my late teens. In the absence of scale cues, even an unmanipulated photograph can appear abstract.

Five Years

One of the folks I follow on Instagram often posts Stories titled "X Years Ago". They go through their image archive and have a look at where they were a year, or five ago. It is an interesting exercise that I've started to do too--looking at the work, at least, not posting it to IG. Anyway, five years ago I was doing a lot of HDR focus stacked macro work. I learned so much about craft by doing this work. A few of the images hold up pretty well, too.

Good light to you this weekend, fellow traveler. Enjoy going through your image archive and having a think about your journey so far.

 

Sofa Wildlife Photography

Once in a while, you just get lucky, photographically speaking at least. I was sitting on the sofa reading the news when I noticed this bird of prey in the yard about 25 feet away from me. I grabbed this photograph as quickly as I could, shooting through our 70 year old picture window, with all its optical distortions. I tried to inch my way closer, for a more frame filling view, but no luck, the bird flew away. 

Screw Epic

We had just finished watching a television program last night when my wife alerted me to a wonderful view of the full moon. It was indeed stunning, so I grabbed my camera with the 600mm f/11 lens attached. I had purchased this lens used a year or so ago for less than $500. I walked outside the kitchen door and made a series of handheld exposures at f/11. Then I held the camera by my side and enjoyed the moon for a moment. I didn't need to travel to an exotic location to get something epic. Seems, I'm turning into an anti-epic photographer. 

Tumblin' Dice

Sitting in a train, kinda bored, passing through the countryside, shooting out the window. Do you ever do that? Anyway, this time at least, some of the compositions ended up being kind of interesting. There was plenty of light so I could use a fast shutter speed and a narrow aperture to get sharp and deep focus, which is what I was after. It is interesting to contemplate the role of chance and probability in photography.