Saturday, March 31, 2012

If you've visited this blog over time you've seen this waterfall before.  I've visited it for over 30 years, and always enjoyed it whether making a photograph or not.  This subject is done to death, of course, but, like portraits of people each is different.  Sometimes the image is a boring cliche, and sometimes it's a bit more than that because there's an inherent design that transcends the subject.  Whichever of those two possibilities you decide this exemplifies, I've decided it's more the latter than the former.


Monday, March 26, 2012

One great thing about film is that it's easy to keep forever.  Were I accumulating digital files, I don't know if I'd even be able to load one that's ten or more years old unless I'd updated the software I'd need to do that as often as necessary (and hope the file was uncorrupted as well). 

The 'graph below is a negative scan from a 2000 photograph.  I never printed it because I thought it was too 'unfriendly' with as much dark as it has.  But....now that I tone prints in thiocarbamide and selenium, the color changes that mood, and I've decided I like this well enough to print next week.  It's also cropped a bit from the full negative (another bit of progress from what I did 12 years ago), and I've noticed that this kind of photograph has now been done by a lot of people (probably had been then, too, of course, but I didn't know). 

Painters become better painters over time as they accumulate, and develop skills.  Yet, their creative vision most likely was there from the beginning and only needed refinement and added scope. The camera, though, nails the image as well earlier in one's development as later.  So....I don't feel that this 'graph is any less current in a way than if I had just made it.  I just 'see' it differently now than then.  Make sense?


Monday, March 19, 2012

It's been a weird, wimpy winter, and now we're experiencing a dramatically early spring.  LOVE IT!!  On Sunday we went out to the Rogowski Family Farm in Pine Island for their farm breakfast which was a real treat, and then meandered home slowly.  Not far from that farm the road crossed the stream below, and we parked a bit up the road and walked back with our cameras (3 people, 4 cameras just to keep the weirdness in play...).  I shot one roll of film from the bridge, and selected these two negatives to scan from the ten on the roll.  It pays to 'work' a subject, because, had I only taken two or three images from the bridge, I doubt I'd have gotten the two below. 





Sunday, March 11, 2012

Being drawn many times to the same place is either a sign of perpetually clinging to the familiar, or being perpetually curious to discover nuances of difference the familiar undergoes from one visit to the next.  I hope my affinity for the falls at Beacon (NY) is of the latter sort, but I'm okay with its being of the former if that's the case.  Different here is the use of the P67 rather than the Mamiya TLR, and my surprise at the extensive sprucing up the site has undergone that has undermined its charm to a notable degree.  I've sort of made this same photograph before, but there are enough differences that I'm not reluctant to post it. 


Saturday, March 3, 2012

I suppose I'm grateful for this year's mild winter, but it has been a big disappointment visually.  Except for last weeks light, and very brief snowfall (see last week's post), this winter has been dull and drab even in sunlight for the most part. So, I'm sharing a photograph from a golden autumn of several years ago when I was able to spend a few hours at a local farm with my very first view camera (a Toyo View with 210 Geronar lens).  Though this is a negative scan, I've now learned how to print this in a way that will be quite close to what you see below.