Saturday, January 31, 2009

Here are another two from the negative files. These were never printed for reasons I can't exactly recall, but I think I was looking for pristine leaves, and these weren't. But I no longer care about perfect leafy greens, and so these will become prints today! It's also a good thing to look at them on a day which will not top the low 20s in temperature, and be reminded that spring will return eventually....yup...yessir....I think so....

It's a cautionary tale, too, for digital photographers that the files that get deleted are gone for good. I keep my film negatives forever (unless they're totally wrecked somehow, but that almost never happens), and when I revisit them perhaps years hence I find that some have become appealing to me as I've grown and evolved in photography. Were I to have tossed them, I'd have needlessly lost a record of past visual exploration that may just have needed time to mature, and be recognized.



Thursday, January 22, 2009

I've signed up for a portfolio review at the Center for Photography at Woodstock, which is a wonderful institution through which I've had the privilege of attending workshops by the photographers Mark Klett, and Mark Citret a number of years ago. This review will demand no fewer than 20 photographs with 25 suggested as an even better portfolio size. There will be five reviewers I will get to select among twenty who will discuss my images with me. They, of course, will expect to see a "body of work" which means that the photographs need to be at least vaguely related by subject, or be a series that comprises a specific project. I emphatically do not think of myself as a "project" photographer, although I do think a thematic link among the pieces selected is a good idea.

In any case, I am combing my files to assemble a set of negatives to print again, or for the first time that will make a worthy body of work to offer the reviewers in addition to my current new photographs which I have very pointedly made with a thematic link in mind.

So, the image below is one of those combed from the negative files I've not printed thus far. It's from Goose Pond Mountain State Park where I have made countless negatives that far exceed the time I have available to print the bulk of them. But....I like this one cropped a bit as it is from a 4x5 neg that is wonderfully sharp and crystal clear. I have no idea at this point if it will make the cut of photographs I choose to present, but at the moment...I like it!


Saturday, January 17, 2009

Here's another reminder of springtime to join the two photographs below. I am really, really sick of this cold, snowy stuff we're going through now, and need spiritual sustenance to hold out till the REAL! springtime rolls 'round in about four months. Yikes....is it going to take that long....sigh....


Sunday, January 11, 2009

I am so sick of shoveling snow and breaking up ice and slipping and sliding around and trying to not fall down and dealing with winter around here in general that I'm posting these two pictures of summer and spring for no other reason than it makes me feel better! ;-)