Catching up on Proofing.

Estate sale pencils in bunches.  50 cents.  Got obsessed with pencils and leaves.

  Feathers?

Fancier feathers?

Redbud and feathers?

  I've been imagining being a little more "celestial.  Acorns falling, so I'm out in the rain picking up and picking out acorns.  The white dot on the end only lasts a few hours, so you have to get really fresh ones and shoot.

Maybe not close enough.

 Now I have another idea.  Any image just wants to be free.

Or too close.  We'll see.

Roll Film.

Last year, (or so), I bought a Fuji 6X9 with 65mm lens to shoot a specific shot at Shiprock.  I really didn't know how it would work.  I shot film with it on several trips where it was too windy or I had too many people around to break out the 5X7.  Got a chance to print and the negatives are plenty sharp.  Viewfinders are weird, but seemed to frame up OK as well.  Fun printing some roll film.

This is actually a replacement print for an image made in 1986.  Before The View Hotel was built on that ridge.  Hasselblad, 50mm and a yellow filter.  I'd forgotten this photo.  I made a print for a graphic artist friend of mine in Houston, she framed it and when one of her kids moved out she offered them any piece of art in the House...they took this.

SE Utah.

Shadow on the San Juan at Bluff, Utah.

House of the Moon, Cedar Mesa.

Looks like it's going to be just the thing if I can ever get up high enough to really shoot the shadow at Shiprock.

2018 Guggenheim.

This years Guggenheim portfolio, in order.  Glad to have it out.  On to the next thing.

Breaking into the Fall.

  Deardorff is recovered.  Mostly.  New back, new ground glass, new lens, new lens board.  Show came and went at Foto Relevance in Houston.  Show opening on Sept 29 at The grace Museum in Abilene, Texas.  Prints are delivered.  Just have to go to the opening.

  Darkroom up and functioning.  Studio is working across the street.  Nothing interferes with work except the normal cacophony of modern life.


  First stage of Guggenheim kicked out the door.

  Tornadoes lined up.  Still taking several sessions to get an idea refined.

Shooting schematic on the back of the Deardorff.

Negative.

Rains brought a big mushroom bloom.  Rare.  We didn't get on last year.

Proof of the negative.  I know how to change it, perhaps improving...but going to let this one sit for a bit.

Mushnado.  Maybe.

  Shows, ideas, some print sales.  

What else is possible?

Raising the Deardorff from the dead.

  Looked like the first thing was to replace the ground glass.  There's a nice Youtube Video, just had to order the stuff.

The stuff.

Followed the video.  Had four pieces of glass cut.  I ground for an hour each.  Replaced the grinding compound several times.  Used a cardboard base.  Each piece got one hour and ten minutes of grinding, plus the grind-er got three hours and 30 minutes.  They all looked the same and all fit and worked as well as the original.  Looks like after an hour's grinding, nothing changes.  They can't be judged wet.  When they are dry you can see what's going on.

  I had a spare I had carried for 25 years in various vehicles.  When I opened up the protective packaging.... IT was shattered.  Now I have a spare for a spare.  Plus another spare.

  Turns out the back springs are sprung and the wood that is missing is important.  Plus I broke a corner mounting pin off.  Looks like its time for a new 5X7 back.  I can have one made....for the price of a used 5X7 Deardorff.  Currently beating the bushes.

  All 4X5 Deardorff Specials come with a 4X5 and 5X7 back.  Seems like there would be a few spare 5X7 backs floating around, since that format is used less.  It's a scavenger hunt.

  But grinding the glass was kinda fun.

Summer starts in the Blackfork Watershed

  We get back.  I'm slightly busted.   No business going, because I'm moving a darkroom and have a quick show deadline looming)  Before I left I'd finished printing a show for Foto Relevance in Houston.  Then I packed up and moved out of the darkroom at Tyler Junior College.  I'd been using it for several years and had printed two big museum shows there, plus this one.  Moving out is an 8X10 enlarger and two 5X7 enlargers.  Sink.  Negative files, plus, plus, plus.  All that stuff piled at Lindsey Lane.  New darkroom will be built there.

  I had the prints.  I ordered the mats.  I ordered the plex.  I had made the frames.  Now it was time to put it all together.  The mats were sloppy- (very rare from my supplier.)  300 bucks worth of  plex was 1/4 inch off.  Crazy, though that's modern life.  Every photo project has a disaster built into it.  You might as well just anticipate it's arrival with gladness.  More plex.  More mats.

  Two days of stretching and pulling got my Moab rib really singing.

  Thirteen nice big 20X24 paper prints in nice frames.  

  Then I drove them 200 miles to Houston on Monday, the 11th.  And drove home.

Stacked along the gallery wall, safe and sound!  Nice little announcement card!

Moab Solstice Snake.

  Don't go there.  It's terrible.  You'll get lost.  Its a 10 mile round trip.  I saw a real rattle snake nearly too late.  The route-finding is very sporty and if you make even the slightest mistake you'll wander in the heat.  There's quite a bit of climbing.  Cactus.  Spiny stuff.  Loose rocks.  All that said...

A friend of mine arranged a ride for about half the distance.  It's really not a road or even a trail.  I wouldn't take a horse or llama in there, much less walk it.  I watched KL drive in and though I saw it with my own eyes, I didn't believe it.  Then we parked and started picking along through broken-block, gnarly, block-tipping, ascending landscape.  Makes the ruggedest parts of Yosemite look like a play school playground.

  But, through luck and lots of research and study of maps, videos, accounts, terrain, et...there we were.

There are few things in MOMA or the Louvre this good.  It's a stomp-down astounding holy thing.

We had decent light, being there fairly early.

  Shot four pieces of film.  Then fell off a rock into a boulder field below.  A little too casual.  Gashed my head, which was pretty scenic, but really nothing, but also broke a rib.  Could have been much, much worse.  Saddled up my gear and out we went.  Deardorff took a beating.  Lost some wood.  Ground glass shattered.  120 Super Angulon took a fatal glass strike.

Happy to be shaken but not stirred.  End of photography for the trip.  I had plenty of other lenses and a spare ground glass, but turned out IT was broken in the pocket of the car.  I'd carried it around for years.  We headed home one day early.