Slowly working the 8X10 Deardorff.

Just a sheet at a time. I've got the sneaking suspicion that my tripod head upgrade on the Gitzo isn't going to be enough. Just not enough contact between the quick release plate and the camera. I'm having to be a little too careful with the camera when it is up there.

Fun working with it. I'm currently lens-rich. Noticing that the more lenses you have means you usually have the wrong ones along for any particular photo.

Using a 190 Commercial Ektar mostly, though a 250 Commercial Ektar that came with it is perfect for moonrises on the 5X7.

Morning take all downtown: 5X7 on courthouse with a 120 Super-Angulon. 5X7 of a building back. Courthouse from another angle with 8X10. 5X7 of a white wall with the light barely grazing it. 8X10 of downtown from a railway crossing. We had overcast skies being torn away little by little. OK light.

Out in the world, Maine.

Cairn building. Never a bad time to pull this out.

End of the 20X24 Ilford Warmtone Multigrade for the year.

16X20s look like snapshots. This is a negative from 1998 that I have never pulled out before. I remember praying up the clouds. The shadow of North Dome is beginning to edge up on the face of Half Dome. Clouds to the West behind me took the light just after.


Nothing to this negative. I shot from on top of my 4-runner though it doesn't look high at all. Gorgeous late light and fast-moving clouds. Just burn the cloud hotspot and you are there. Next three negs...(two holders, both sides), aren't as dramatic. Close to my Pear tree.


Yosemite Valley after a light snow. Had to wait all day for them to open the road to the overlook. It was loaded with photographers. One guy even had a scanner for the back of his 4X5 view camera. Katie got to see a bunch of photographers working frantically. Shot this after sundown so the light would be smooth enough. Dodging down low and a little burning across the sky.


Pear Tree I have photographed since about 1992. This year a limb broke and fell just as it was blooming out. Touchy negative in an odd way. I waited on the light and shot just before the sun went off the blossoms. It was off the grass. Copy of a slightly different negative in a post below.


The famous Transcept from the North Rim. Every morning before dawn and evening at dusk I was on Bright Angel Point. Ferocious wind...you just had to move back a few feet out of it. This is evening. View metered perfect for normal film development with my Pentax spot meter, I just had to decide about filtration. Easy negative. Dodged the lower shadows and slightly burned the sky tilting to the right.

Long darkroom run today as the tapwater tops 80. My darkroom is going to be in perfect order just as printing ends for the year. Everything done. Just a pack of 16X20 and some 11X14 to go through. The 11X14 could make the summer in the refrigerator. Hope to be back in Monday.

Copied all the prints while they were on drying screens with Nikon 300 but used Nikkor 105 tele from my film camera.

All images for sale. Email.

In the darkroom.

Omega E


Framed Crow in Hand.


Lake road at GreenBriar Lake, just out of the fixer.

Sorting stuff to ebay and organizing.

Giving up on my little processor and chem I used to use for commercial jobs- a little Royalprint set-up.

Looking to hook up the big Zone VI 20X24 washer next to the bathroom in the back. Might make washing a little easier. Has to be waist high but on a king/hell stand. That thing weighs a ton when you get it full of water.

Just noticed that I have one big picture window up front that faces North. I never display anything in the windows because of the late Western Sun, but I could put a little something up on the North if I set it up right.

Sorting and stacking. Paper doesn't survive a year's worth of summer heat so I am trying to wrap up printing in the next couple of weeks. Can't print with tap water over 80 anyway.

Making some gorgeous prints. I love digital and you can certainly FIX things with electronic retouching, but there is nothing like the crystaline depths of a well-made silver print. I've made a serious effort to only photograph in light that totally supports the subject. Negs are generally easy to print and very dramatic.

While finishing up the Greenbriar stuff I am hitting a few other negs. Lower Yosemite Falls in a snowstorm. Yosemite Valley in the rain. More tomorrow. I made an extra print of the moonrise over some folks house out at Greenbriar. They know me. Going to offer them a print. They would be fools not to take it.

Got someone agonizing over a Crow/hand print right now via email. That print cures 137 different physical and mental aliments common to humans. They should jump but you never know.

Photographers Equinox.

Tap water running 68 degrees out of the cold side this morning in the darkroom. Actually processed a roll of HP5 that I shot in the Hasselblad yesterday. And made a few prints in the afternoon. Always nice to be in the darkroom.

Was printing some contact prints of Cat Woman on Ilford Warmtone Multigrade. I use my Aristo Grid-headed Omega. I wonder if the light color is influencing the filter color? I think I remember a discussion about this. Just started using graded papers and have the Kodak filters, the Ilford filters and the Bestler filter sets. The negative is too contrasty for anything but Palladium so I doubled the dilution of the developer, Zonal Pro, from 1:9 to 1:18, lengthened the development time to about 4 minutes and used a 1/2 Iford filter. It made a difference and looked good but the proof will be in the prints after I look at them for a bit.

Greenbriar Lake and White Trees work.

Dogwood, Greenbriar Lake. Very late in the evening, about a 12 second exposure.


Moonrise across Greenbrair Lake.


Wild Pear I have been photographing for 20 years.

This month. All with 5X7 Deardorff. Not as happy with Xtol as I thought I might be. Might be going back to HC110. Xtol can really build density along the film edge. Proofing in the real darkroom and digitally copying the proofs. I am getting a pretty good idea about what I'm going to run into in the darkroom

Hawk and Owl Feather.

From about 1980. My Deardorff with a 4X5 back on it. Window light. 210 lens and a camera darkcloth for a background.

Darkroom.

Knives in an old beaker from Tom Swinney's darkroom. Digital file.

Water temp very good. Nice time to be working.

Xtol and HP5.

One of the signs that the end times have come and gone is the conversion of normal American products into metric measurements. A gallon has been a gallon forever but now in the end of darkroom processes, (since Kodak ruined Tri-X), I decided to try Xtol, the last Kodak black and white film developer that their will ever be.

Mixing it is a pain though...because it's in LITERS. And not just four liters that more or less equal a gallon....FIVE liters. A gallon and about a quart more. What do you do with the extra quart? Put it in a spare bottle? Use it one the spot? Dump it? Find some container that holds, (as none do) five liters? And the mixing can't be done in two 64 oz stainless steel pitchers that have been mixing chemicals for 40 years....you have to get a big plastic bucket.

So. Gallon bottles abound. What the heck holds five liters? God IS dead.

Mixed Xtol, stored a gallon, processes 24 ozs worth- two sheet film runs and dumped the extra.

Tap water and white trees.

Big limb seen overhead here broke and is angled out of the tree on the grass, all bloomed out. Like a huge garland. This same thing happened about ten years ago when a whole white tree fell out of the woodline and then bloomed. I print that image but it's difficult because I was using new Tri-x just after they changed it without telling anyone. They ruined the high values with the new emulsion and it prints with an odd flatness I didn't expect. Now using Ilford HP5 and Xtol. I'd used Tri-x and Hc110 for 30 years, with happiness.

Out with film to get a couple images that matter of white trees. Windy yesterday at my favorite tree out on Hiighway 64. Give it another shake today. Going into the darkroom to run film now and reload my holders. Beautiful time of the year.

Making a real effort to shoot in the most dramatic light of the day.

Tap water running at 50 degrees. Have to turn on the hot water heater to get a little help. Usually I just walk down to Brady's coffee with a 64 oz pitcher.

Snow Days

At her first look out the front door, she headed back up the stairs to hide. Later, Lucie was ready to rumble.


Greenbriar Lake next to an old favorite tree.


Lakeside with 5X7.


Scattered owl feathers in the brambles and cat briar.


I had on some snow boots we bought on the way into Yosemite during a Winter trip. Ski pants. Stayed comfortable enough.

We only get a few snow days a year here in Tyler. Usually we wake up to a trackless fairyland, by noon it has taken a beating and the roads are open and in the afternoon it sags into slush. I got up early and got out into it.

Snail Hand on exhibit in University of Dallas collection.

"Fragile Connection" is up at the University of Dallas campus. The Comer Collection. I have no clue how they got a print, though they certainly are on the market. Amon Carter exhibited a big 20X24 or this in their Masterworks gallery a couple years ago. Nice image. Glad to have it seen.