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.)

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.

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.

This is a crop of a 4x5 black and white negative that included the far shore and more of the branches which were very nice. But I liked the purity of the silvery river enough to crop out the rest. I've become much more adventurous since learning to cut my own mats. I feel totally free to crop or not because I can formally present the image no matter where the edges end up. The river is the Wallkill that runs a very long distance through Orange County, NY.

From this past Saturday's early morning expedition to Hudson, this was the first thing I was attracted to, and it remains the only image I think is worthwhile from the time there. But being on that bridge before the sunrise over "Anthony's Nose" was worth every moment spent.





If you've seen the movie "Michael Clayton" then you've seen this place. He stops his car to walk up a hill where there are a couple of horses browsing...and then his car blows up! This is that hill, but there are no horses that graze there in reality. I took this because I liked the skeletal trees, juxtaposed with the skeletal trestle.

And another month has gone by without much photography, but in the last few days I've exposed 16 sheets of 4x5 film. Here are two from a marsh just south of the Bear Mountain Bridge. I've been using my new 210mm Nikkor lens, and the 250mm Fujinon as well. However, I have no idea which is which below, nor can I even remember if perhaps both were taken with the 250. The sun was strong; the mind was weak. No records were kept. Rats!

It's been a while (about a month or more) since I've exercised a camera, but Easter Monday was a day off from work that was beautiful if chilly. The photographs below were made in tiny Craigville at a small, memorial park. I have photographed here before, but not actually printed the negatives as I wanted to come back and use the 4x5 rather than the C220. The time I spent was very satisfying, and these two images were my favorites of the eight films I exposed.

Despite some pretty hideous weather on Saturday, our opening went very nicely. Susan, Devin and I sat all alone by our very own selves for the first 15 minutes or so thinking gloomy thoughts and staring at all the food and wine that was going to go to waste, when all of a sudden people began to arrive and the "party" really got going. I was too busy chatting with visitors to count heads, but it seemed to be well attended after all, and two of my photographs were purchased into the bargain. That was a nice feeling. Now I can start working on a new project, and begin the long process of building a new body of work. It can be arduous to be sure, but for me at least, it's better than golf! ;-)

Views of the exhibition announced below are now online at dalyvoss.com. Click on "exhibition images".

This is the card for our upcoming show. Susan's work is fantastic....my work is what it is...black and white photographs. It's keeping us both very, very busy for the next two weeks. I won't be posting any new work till the show is up. All are invited. We hope to have scans of all the work in the show by March 1st, so you can visit us then at dalyvoss.com. BTW, the Walkill River Gallery is in Montgomery, New York. It's a charming old, small town on the Walkill River in Orange County. There are a surprising number of good restaurants there, so if you come by you won't be at a loss for food and drink at the opening, or in the town.

February 13th brought a marvelous/awful ice storm to our region. Marvelous, in the spectacular beauty of ice embracing every twig and pebble...awful, in the treacherously slippery footing and road surface conditions that persisted throughout the day despite temperatures above freezing. In fact, as fog and mist and sleet and rain drenched these branches, the coating of ice only increased...go figure....I guess the trees were solidly frozen and were colder than the air. In any case, I had a happy time with the Shen Hao aimed out one of the rear windows of our house. Here's one of the six exposures I made with the 4x5.

I've been going through my negative file for stuff I've not printed at all for one reason or another. This is a square crop of a 4x5 negative I made last spring I think. No photographer can continue to exist without having made an image of this timeworn subject (written with tongue planted firmly against cheek). This is my first. It's an endearing and enduring subject despite its ubiquity. Perhaps I will make more in the future as lily pads are alluring. ;-)

I've not posted here for a while because I've been too busy "finishing" prints for exhibition to have had time to make new ones. The two 'graphs below are from a storm that was predicted to be a major one, but turned out to be a very beautiful, but low accumulation event. I was able to hijack a little time to make these from our deck. The lower one is from a venerable old character that has learned to weather the wind and weight of heavy snow. The upper is the same view as an earlier post. I will probably make many more very similar 'graphs, because there are infinite variations of light and circumstances that beg to be recorded. Both were made with the Shen-Hao 4x5 using the Fujinon 250mm lens. I love where I live!

A few weeks ago our family set out on an afternoon trip to a nearby town. We stopped at a lovely little park on the way. While there, my 11 yr old step-son had just hopped across this little fall to what is the very large rock to the right. He was larking about when he slipped and fell into the stream. Startled as all get out, he scrambled up on the rock again and hopped back to 'shore'. Soaked nearly to his waist, we had to come home for him to change. The upside to all this is that he managed to spare the Nintendo game that he was carrying from going in the drink. It finally all ended well when he went to a friend's house, and Susan and I headed out for our original destination.

This past Monday, December 10th, we had a small scale ice storm. The ice melted from the roads and driveway, but the persistent fog froze on every tree limb and twig. This is, again, taken from our back deck. It's a crop from a 4x5 negative that seemed to retain the essentials while eliminating the busyness of what was there. I also like the dominant gray. (There is a bare minimum of PS here....just some sharpening, although the negative is tack sharp, and a very small levels adjustment.)

These are 'end of the roll' photographs I thought were worthy of making. The light in our front room (which is given over entirely to music and art) is gorgeous in the mid to late afternoon almost all year long, and the curtains and plants look wonderful in that light. So here, at the end of a roll from the P67, are a couple of what I think are real goodies.

I've been thinking about what I'd like to include in a show that's coming up in March, so I've been rummaging around in my negative files and found this from 2004. There's another image from that day that I've printed and enjoyed during the intervening years, but this is one I think I'll look at some more, and maybe print as a companion piece (they were taken on the same day at the same place.) BTW, I was very new to large format, and this is one of the better photographs I made at the time. (210 Rodenstock Geronar on an OmegaView 4x5)

A snowy morning was all the excuse I needed to ditch work, and go to the wetland to see what was worth burning some film on. It was a good time to make the attempt as the snow had not stuck to the roads and thus the little, paved parking area was easily negotiable. I decided to use the P67 even though I'd rather have brought the 4x5, since it's much more weather resistant than the LF machine (no bellows to get wet for instance), and has excellent lenses. So here are two I made this morning (November 19th) with the 200mm lens.

We woke up this Saturday morning (November 10th) to a light coating of snow. There are still a good many brilliant yellow, orange, and red leaves clinging to the last gasps of autumn, and they were heavy with the wet white stuff. These photographs were made on our deck. I used the Shen-Hao with a 250mm Fujinon lens and Kodak Tri-X 320 film.

At the end of my visit to the wetland last week, a cold front came sweeping across the sky, the leading edge of which you see below. I had no time to change lenses, fuss with filters or do anything at all including re-metering the swiftly changing light. Happily, the film had enough latitude to work with the settings that were in place as this front blasted through. In just a few minutes the light had gone from golden and warm to gray and bleak, the wind picked up, and I was chilled to the core. Nonetheless, in about 10 minutes or so, it completely passed over, and the entire scene became bathed in pink and orange light that was actually thrilling to be enveloped by. It was a memorable afternoon.