Well, I was mistaken. Photography IS possible in August...especially when it rains. The photographs below were made on our deck between downpours. It wasn't fun standing in 90 degree heat with 100% humidity, but art is a demanding taskmaster and must be obeyed. (big wink...I'm not that impressed with myself. As my mother often said, those who love themselves too well have no rivals. She was wise.)

I don't know the name of this flower, but Susan has arranged for it to grow vinelike (and a vine it may well be) around and through some branches cut from a dead tree we had to have felled which are wired to our deck's railing. The birds love to come and perch there, and this plant seems to thrive on the armature the branches have become.

I seem to be most often drawn to a lens that offers about a 65 to 80mm lens view in 35mm terms. Each of the cameras I use has one lens that more or less fits that way of seeing. In this case it's the 135mm lens on the P67. That lens also has some macro capability, so it's well suited to this subject. We'll see what else compels me to put the camera(s) to work in the coming two weeks before the summer ends for me.

August is a terrible month for photography around here. The light is harsh, the weather is hot, humid, and not conducive to "getting out there", and since I've not yet succumbed to the current craze for last light, or no light (i.e. night) photography there won't be much if any film exposed. I was also so disappointed in the rest of the film I shot in North Carolina that I choose not to post any of it here.

But...there are a helluvalotta negatives I've yet to print, and the two scans below are among them. The other challenge is to finally lash myself to the "wet side" of the darkroom, and work on selenium and sepia toning until it meets my expectations, which are quite high.

It's a paradox that during the academic work year I long for unstructured time away, but when it finally arrives I find myself mired in inertia. Yes, the movies I've watched were good to see...the extra sleep was welcome and needed, contemplation of my navel needed renewed attention, and general laziness has a worthy place in a well balanced life. But, getting stuff done that makes one happy is a low stress imperative that I need to adhere to in the waning weeks of vacation (which is actually a lifestyle change), so to the grindstone I shall commit my nose forthwith. Well...maybe tomorrow...;-)

"The South" is not what I grew up thinking it was...witness a teeshirt I saw for sale in North Carolina that boldly proclaimed: "Paddle Faster, I hear Banjo Music" Well, that may or may not be funny, but as a caricature, it's close to what I was raised to expect. The civil rights movement also made an indelible impression of a culture so antithetical to mine that I early on told the woman I would eventually marry, who is in fact a southerner, that I wondered what was the point in venturing anywhere "below" Washington, DC.

I've come to know better. The states from Virginia to Florida that I've just begun to become familiar with are beautiful, interesting, cultured, artistic, and totally worthy of respect and high regard. They have a difficult history, as do the northern states. So what!

My time spent in Georgia and North Carolina has been immensely rewarding. The two images below were made on the property of the rented cabin we spent several days enjoying in North Carolina. I'd have posted images from our day in Savannah, GA as well, but I didn't make any...too much to absorb in too little time to make photographs. There will be some more images to come from our little hike at Linville Falls. I hope you enjoy these two.

For the past ten years I've been assistant principal cello in an excellent professional orchestra that performs for nascent, and experienced conductors at an upstate NY college during the month of July. These conductors are there to improve every aspect of their approach to the conductor's art which is exceptionally demanding, and highly stressful. We are there to perform significant repertoire in a way that accurately mirrors what they, the conductors, are attempting to show through gesture. This month the repertoire includes Mozart-Jupiter Symphony, Beethoven-Symphony No. 8, Brahms-3rd Symphony, Mahler-5th Symphony, Ravel-Daphnis and Chloe Suite No. 2, Bartok-Concerto for Orchestra, Stravinsky-Rite of Spring, Berlioz-Symphoy Fantastique, a wonderful full string orchestra version of Shostakovitch-String Quartet No. 8, and a yet to be chosen contemporary work that will have a world premier at the end of the month. Sooooo.....I just haven't got time to make photographs, nor post here this month. I need to be able to play these pieces well, and be flexible enough to modify what one conductor chooses to do, with the next, and possibly different approach that may immediately follow.

I thank you who visit here regularly for doing so, but there will not be any new posts till sometime in August I expect. Ironically, my drive to and from Bard College is a gorgeous one, and I'd love to be able to stop and make photographs, but it just can't be done. So...please visit as often as you'd like to review past work, but nothing new will appear for a few weeks.

Bye for now!

These three photographs were made a little over a week ago when I first noticed how over-its-banks the Wallkill River had become from preternaturally heavy rains. But now the rains have continued, and I'm going to have to go check out how much higher the water may have risen out where these were taken (very near Montgomery, NY where our gallery is located). I'm not used to seeing tree trunks in water, and their lower hanging branches bobbing in the rapid flow, so there may be some more good stuff to photograph.

They are scans of 4x5 negatives made with the Shen Hao and my 250mm Fujinon lens that I love to use. But....that is one big honkin lens, and the Benro K-2 ball head just isn't doing the job of holding it very well, so I'm going to return to using the Bogen 410 geared head that is as rigid as a wingnut conspiracy theorist. I paid less than $100 for the Benro (only to then read that some consider it to be a GPS..and no, I do not refer to the satellite guidance thingie.) and it works very well with my other two medium format cameras, so I still feel it's an okay piece of kit, but if I win the lottery, I'm going to get me one whoop-di-doo Arca Swiss B-1 or B2 that'll hold a howitzer in a hurricane. But there's that pesky hurdle of first winning the lottery ....sigh!! (Must remember to buy ticket...must buy ticket...must buy ticket....!!!)

I have just officially saved myself about $120 at the very least. Why? Because I decided not to send my new-to-me Mamiya C330 to a camera repair shop to have the light seals replaced. Instead, I bought a repair kit on-line from ebay for about $10 including shipping, and did it myself. I did try this earlier using the self-adhesive soft half of a strip of Velcro without any success at all, so I'm really glad I found the right stuff to use this time.

The images below are from two different rolls of long expired HP5 (2002) that I used to check the results. Woohoo! success! There's no discernible photon penetration in places that shouldn't be penetrated by photons especially in the upper 'graph which was made in very bright and intense sunlight. And, happily, the film itself seemed to have done well despite its alleged terminal status.

When, for whatever reason, I can't actively be making a photograph in the field or the darkroom, I am constantly looking at photographs by any medium available. Of course, on-line is the most likely, and I've posted some favorite sites on a side bar. But I've stumbled onto a site that offers the visual equivalent of a nearly endless buffet of food. It's a buffet that allows indulgence without calories or guilt. A wallow if you will (or even if you won't).

I believe that looking at photographs as much as possible is an indispensable part of educating one's self in the medium. It nourishes the visual literacy that is necessary to distinguish worthy work from the trite and cliched, as well as what's just not going to ever be part of the aesthetic you embrace however well regarded it may be by others. I experience a palpable, and visceral thrill when I see photographs that resonate with my current sensibilities, and find myself startled when work I'd not thought I'd ever be likely to enjoy satisfies my viewing.

So here, in lieu of a photograph or two of my own, is the URL of the site I've discovered. I warn you that you will need a lot of time to explore it's many contributors, and I make no apology if such indulgence gets you in trouble with those who insist on availing themselves of your time. I wish you who visit this resource multiple eyegasms!

http://photography-now.net/listings/index.php?option=com_alphacontent&section=29&sort=5&Itemid=293&limit=50&limitstart=0

Last week's post mentioned the multitude of millionaires in New Jersey. Well, some of these folks were thoughtful enough to leave or sell their estates to the state or counties which have now become extraordinary parks for all to enjoy. Natirar (Raritan backward) is the name of an estate once owned by the king of Morocco. "The river and Peapack Brook run through it. The estate includes 22 buildings, many historic, six wells and three bridges, NJ Transit right-of-way and three streams, a pond, woodland. The 33,000 square-foot mansion itself, grand that it may be, is sedate and austere. Its history intrigues."* It is owned by the Somerset County Parks Commission which bought the place for 22 million dollars. "The mansion, two cottages, carriage house and greenhouse stand on 88 acres that the county plans to lease to Sir Richard Branson, owner of Virgin Airlines. The house will continue on as a retreat facility ­ albeit commercial, not philanthropic ­ with a full-service spa, conference center and restaurant that will be open to the public. The other 403 acres will be maintained as open space." *

The place is an absolutely gorgeous park. The two photographs below were made on May 15th while circumambulating the carriage path that is about a mile and a half or two in length. I schlepped the entire 4x5 kit (3 lenses, Shen Hao camera, 1 degree spot meter, darkcloth, tripod, film holders (10), filters, and loupe); the P67 might have done as well, but I love the big negatives. Thank goodness I don't have an 8x10 jones, or I'd be in traction.

* from: http://www.njskylands.com/clnatirar.htm

People give the entire state of New Jersey a terrible time. It's as if it were simply destined to be the butt of jokes because some state had to be, and Jersey's number came up....I don't know. It doesn't help that it hasn't got a single city that's got the stature of it's Pennsylvania, or New York neighbors' greater cities; nor that it's decades of polluted air from the oil refineries in the northeastern part of the state are drive through souvenirs as one traverses the New Jersey Turnpike. But I recently learned (though I haven't checked that this is true) that NJ has more millionaires than any other state in the union. It also has some of the loveliest and most cultivated wealthy suburban and semi-rural areas I've ever visited. It has some pretty damn good universities too i.e. Princeton, and Rutgers, and one helluva popular Atlantic Ocean coastline.

The two photographs below are from a Morris County park called Willow Wood. It's an arboretum that is easy to walk through, and lush with a rich variety of plantings that offer wonderful flora that bloom and strut their stuff during the different months and seasons of the year. We will return to this pocket paradise again...and perhaps many times...to paint and photogarph it's vivid beauty.

I often marvel at the extraordinary still life photographs of flowers done so well by so many photographers. I, however, have almost never made an image of a flower or flowers either outdoors or in the studio with the notable exception of some flowering dogwood trees. But, here are a couple that I've posted to break the ice. The lower one was made at an arboretum here in Orange County. Making flower photographs there is like fishing in a well stocked pond...the subjects are abundant; the skill to capture them well is another matter. The upper 'graph was made at the little park in Craigville where I've made a number of images that I really like. As I may have written somewhere else on this blog, it's a memorial to a young boy who died of an incurable disease, and whose family belonged to the religious congregation that built the park. A lovely stream runs through it, and the place fosters a deep sense of peace that is a fitting commemoration of a young life too early extinguished. I never fail to find something that absorbs me there, and may also be worthy of a photograph. But most of all, I enjoy the sense of tranquility that permeates the trees, grass, and flowing water.

The photograph below was posted with a rant I should never have written late on a Friday night when I was too tired for my frontal lobe to have taken an active part in its composition. In other words, it was a pretty dumb thesis that seemed even dumber after a good night's sleep. It wasn't dumb because it was wildly wacko wrong, but because it needed a lot more words, and a lot deeper scholarship to make its' case. So...here's the pic that it went with without the blather. It's a bit abstract, but not too much so that you can't recognize what it is. I hope you like it.

This weekend was spectacular! It has been unseasonably warm...a strong taste of summer...and brilliantly sunlit, but the humidity didn't accompany the heat, so for me at least, it's been a real treat. On Saturday morning we drove over to Iona Marsh that lies just south of the Bear Mountain Bridge on the west bank of the Hudson River. Susan wanted to scout the area for painting subjects, and I had brought along both my MF and LF kits to make photographs.

It's interesting to me that marshes seem to change very little from season to season other than the presence or absence of ice which isn't even a factor when the marsh is in salty water. The water this far up the Hudson is, I am told, a bit briny although it's quite far from the sea, because salt water is conveyed in ever more diluted quantities by the tide.

Once again (as will often be the case now) this is a PS toned negative scan that attempts to replicate a real print that will be toned as described below. The camera was the P67 with 135mm lens, and a green filter.

Living where we do, spring gets sprung a bit later...maybe a week or two...than it does closer to NYC. The early vivid green of nascent leaves and swollen buds on a warm and sunbathed day is palpably thrilling. I found myself wandering near where our gallery is located (Montgomery, NY) and drove to several places I'd thought might yield promising camera fodder, and was happy to discover what you see here. These are negative scans that I've photoshopped to resemble the toning they'll get when prints are made. The toning will be a light bleaching in a dilute potassium ferricyanide and potassium bromide solution, and then a brief bath in thiocarbamide with sodium hydroxide controller followed by selenium 1:10 with generous washing between steps. For certain subjects, I think the warmth added by the toning is very welcome. (BTW, I was using the P67 with a 135mm lens for these which I've cropped to the more squarish presentation I prefer. )

The opening for our show was a lot of fun! As I've written elsewhere, the show itself was totally free of anxiety...the work was done; it was as good as it was going to get, and folks would either like it or not. But hoping people would attend, that there'd be enough wine and goodies, and even maybe (by the grace of the Flying Spaghetti Monster) some red dots would appear (as if the work were getting chicken pox! ;)...well, that's what one worries about. But all the concerns were quenched with a decent turnout, adequate treats, and...yes...some red dots for both Susan and me! (in fact, today, another of Susan's large paintings sold which is a really good thing to have happened given this miserable economy). And best of all, we were surprised and delighted to have some very special people show up...friends from both our real and virtual worlds (i.e. internet buddies), and family...my two sons, who traveled a great distance to be there. So...it's been worthwhile, and I'm pretty happy about it all.

Now, since these posts almost always involve an image or two, here's one that I've not scanned or printed before. It's from a week in 2004 that we spent visiting Susan's family in Florida (north Florida...not the south Florida snowbird roost that so many from our area have migrated to. Susan's a native of the area.) It's from a road that leads to and from the Kingsley Plantation (google it...it's quite a historical treasure). I was using my big ole honkin Toyo D monorail camera on a heavy tripod with the only lens I think I had at the time, a 210 Rodenstock Geronar. I'm posting it because it's a nice reminder of where we could have been this week. It's also fodder for toning in thiocarbamide and selenium which is my current exploration.

We're having our second show at the Wallkill River Gallery. The back of the show-card says:

"An exhibition of oil paintings and black and white photographs in the main galleries of the historic Patchett House, home of the Wallkill School and Gallery.

April 1-30, 2009

Reception on Saturday April 4th, from 5 - 8 PM"

Any of you who can make it to the show will enjoy seeing the Patchett House at the very least. It's a mid 19th century structure that has been beautifully restored. It's located at 232 Ward Street (17K) in Montgomery, New York. Hours are Tuesday through Sunday 9AM to 6PM
The webaddress is: www.wallkillriverschool.com

We'd love to see any of you who can drop by for the opening, or hear from you if you visit the show during April.

Sunday, the 15th of March, was a gorgeous and springlike day. I couldn't wait to get out of the house and exercise myself and the camera which I did with great pleasure. Before I hiked at Goose Pond Mountain State Park, I stopped at the bottom of the "hill" we live on to photograph these images at Walton Lake. The top image is of a fence that separates the public access part of the lake from someone's teensy little postage stamp plot of lake front. The bottom image is of two of the aluminum fishing boats that have wintered over rather badly topside up in the rain and snow. A couple of guys have some serious bailing to do!

Here are yet a couple more from my perambulations around the pond at Goose Pond Mountain State Park two weeks ago. I've titled them as "Winter Light" one and two, but they're really not images that should be titled beyond the imperatives of time and place. Were "winter light" to be a meaningful title, there would have to be less than one percent of the gazillion images that call themselves that to be significant.

They have yet to be printed. I am about to embark on a toning journey that may deepen the sense of mood and light, and these are grist for that exploration. We'll see.

Here are another three from yesterday (March 8th) at Goose Pond Mountain State Park. I've returned here over and over again for several years now, and I recognize in photographing it, the same mentality I seem to exhibit when I buy clothes. Blue, denim, khaki., blue, denim, khaki, white., blue, denim, khaki, white with stripes, black, black black...etc. etc. These negative scans may become prints eventually. They're 6x7 negatives that I've cropped to my nearly obsessively favored squares. They will almost certainly end up being toned with thiocarbamide and selenium, so what you see here isn't really what they'll look like. And...I've Photo Shopped them a good bit in the manner I will likely utilize when I'm printing them for real, so they're not really pure scans at all. Anyway...the joy is in the discovery and the execution, and the next best part is yet to come, i.e. the darkroom. I would abandon photography in a heartbeat if I had no recourse but a completely digital continuum. The irony is that digitizing film is my absolute first choice in previewing negatives...I've not made a contact sheet in years. But, after that, the "real" photographic process begins for me, and I get to retreat to my warm, and cozy darkroom. Will the weekend never come! ;-)

Today was a gorgeous respite from the last few wintry weeks. I can only hope that we've seen the last of ice and snow, but I'm hedging my bets on that...we'll see. My younger son was born on April 8th, two days after a monstrous blizzard of 14 inches or so of snow on April 6th 1982, so who knows. I'm going to hang up the shovel and drain the snow blower; I could be wrong! ;-)

After a reflective week following the portfolio review, I'm enthusiastic about my work...I feel empowered to make my own decisions, and utterly comfortable being dismissive of the bullshit that one reviewer had a hard time defining as "contemporary photography". Of the six people who evaluated my portfolio, most were very enthusiastic, one was exceptionally helpful, another was indifferent, and the rest spanned the gamut in between.

These two images were made on February 28th, and represent a direction I'm eager to continue pursuing. The chaos of nature is utterly hypnotic to me, and I hope to become yet more attune to the order that, nonetheless, resides therein.