Sunday, September 2, 2012

Follow-up work.


The Black Giant.

Happily burning film.

  This reminds me of the fun, strategizing and long zen-like time-packages of deer hunting....then one shot and you are up to your elbows in hauling, dragging, cutting, buttering, cleaning.   Blood and guts.  The other part of being an artist.

  Absolutely worked at Shiprock for four days.  Camera, pack and careful footwork up, down and around, sleeping on the rock every night in place for the next morning light.  Back home and the processing and lab work starts.  120+ sheets processed, then proofed, now matching the negatives and proofs, sleeving, sorting, tossing.  The editing process.

  On my last Light Impressions 5X7 box.  Low on sleeves and envelopes.  There isn't a functional Light Impressions, any more.  Hard to know where the support and storage materials are going to come from.

  Putting the negatives IN ORDER of shooting.  That's quite a memory feat.  Then I'll look through them a few more times, check the tap water temp and start printing a few.

  Interesting to see the failures.  Some technical stuff.  Pinholes, light leaks in the holders.  Sweaty fingerprints from loading film in a bag in the daytime.  All those negatives and proofs go by the wayside.    I shoot doubles-both sides of a film holder, and return several times to the same subject in different lighting conditions.

  One of the main shots I wanted and worked on never came together.  I was shooting a photo of the main body of Shiprock from the South.  90mm vignetted like heck.  120 Angulon wasn't quite wide enough.  Never got the light I expected.  10 negatives shot in three attempts.  All gone.

  After I get them firmly in the box and in sequence it's going to be fun to work them out.  Might get one more quick trip to the rock and looks like we are going to Canyon de Chelly the first part of next month to shoot a bit.

  I'll never get caught up with printing.

Morning shadow to the West for 45 seconds.

Climbers Cave rockwork.

Update:  All in the box.  34 different scenes.  120+ negs cut down to aprox 90 due to pinholes in the sky, fingerprints, flare.  Always had a backup so I didn't lose a scene though a few didn't make it past the edit.  Just thumbed through looking for the hits and there are about 14 I would put in the portfolio.

1 comment:

Larry C. Price said...

Hi Bob...I enjoy your blog and fondly remember passing Shiprock a few times while prowling around that neck of the woods. Hey, Hollinger is still alive and kicking. Just ordered some 20X24 boxes from them and they arrived in a timely manner, direct from HQ. Less expensive the LI anyway. Cheers, Larry Price. SHSU '74-75, UT '77.