Sunday, May 25, 2008

I was able to get out today with the 4x5 and ended up on Wisnewski Road in the black dirt region of Orange County. I've made some 'graphs here before, but today was particularly worthwhile, because the values were so absolute..... pure monochrome fodder. The dirt here really is black, and the entire area hasn't been developed by home builders because it's very soft, porous, and easily blown away. I have no idea why that deters a determined builder, but that's the story that the locals tell me, and I'm happy these fields remain agricultural whatever the reason. The plantings are young onions which are grown here in great quantities. They are sweet, juicy and absolutely delicious; they're totally worth the social isolation that follows eating them ;-) ! (BTW, the lens I used here is my Fujinon 250mm 6.3. As much as I love my 210 Nikkor, I use this lens a lot, and love it just as much.)



Saturday, May 10, 2008

I finally got around to developing a roll of film I exposed on my way home from the AIPAD show in NYC in April. The sky was very active with a late afternoon cloud show, and I found a place to pull off the Palisades Parkway to investigate the Hudson and the the clouds. I liked this negative more than the others each of which were quite different because the sky was changing very rapidly. It's often easy to see what made the Hudson River School painters so inspired. It is an astonishingly beautiful scenic river with its mountainous banks and verdant forests.



Saturday, May 3, 2008

I can't get through the spring without looking for a dogwood tree blooming in the forest somewhere. This year I found several in an easy to access location, and stopped on the way home from work on Friday (May 2nd) to make some photographs. The air was dead still and humid, and the light was rather dim, so this is a one second exposure between f22 and f32 on Delta 100 film. The nice thing about the 4x5 camera for a longish exposure is that the leaf shutter is all but vibrationless, and with no breeze either, this is one damn sharp negative.

This is posted in honor of my mother whose birthday is today (May 3rd). She would have been 99 years old. She loved the woods and flowers and would have liked this photograph I think.