Picture hanging at Brady's Coffee.

Asked Brady for a space in the art-cluttered walls at the coffee shop. He managed to work one of mine in. I'm going to change it every week. Plenty of framed pieces around, I just hate hanging in cheap places and most of the 30 or so paintings on display in there are pure schlock.

Update: I change the photo weekly.

Light Impressions.

Overpriced and most of it ends up backordered. I have some boxes that have been on the truck from the supplier....since Feb 2010. Today they told me they were STILL on the truck. Must be a talking point. Great stuff: insane prices. Ordered some negative boxes I love when they put out an email 15% off offer. We'll see. 250 bucks worth of cardboard and plastic.

Another Darkroom Day.

Rock forms up on the big ledge near the climbers cave on the West face. This is a great place to spend the night or be on very early in the morning to get the shadow as the sun rises. I've been trapped in the cave when it turned into a waterfall in a big storm once. In the morning you have smooth shadowed light to work details around this area after the peak-on-the-plains display is over.


East Dike. Just above one of the most-used drinking and hang-out spots. Gotta watch your car when you are not in it. Indians stole my stuff while I was in sight once here. They saw me, and I watched them, just couldn't do anything about it and refused to shoot. I got their plate number but the Navajo police don't care about tourist crime.


Afternoon view over the East dike with a storm moving past.

Another day in the darkroom printing out photo paper before the water gets too hot. It's running 82. Feels warm in the air conditioned lab. Ran the hot side with the water heater off to take advantage of the tank of cool water.

Usually go: developer, stop, fix and hold in running water until I re-fix everything, tone and THEN wash. With these baby 11X14 prints I was able to set up the whole line: dev/stop/fix/fix/hypoclear/tone/wash. Made it a little shorter process time. Plenty of sink room.

Opened a 10 pack of Agfa Insignia #4 left over from last year. It was too fogged to use. Good plan to finish off the paper.

Picked and chose from old negatives. These are all Shiprock images that didn't make the cut for a nice show. Easy to print. Dramatic. Enough never-printed negs to make a whole extra show. Found a moonrise over Shiprock I didn't remember. Wish I had another 20 sheets of 20X24. Tempted to order from B&H but I'm right up against the end.

Setting up lights and copying wet prints on the drying screens using an old Nikon 105mm and my D300. Easy. I have been copying proofs. Using medium-high ISO and small file size. In person, they are very sharp.

Printing out the end of the seasons paper.

Bristlecone Pine detail. 1999. 16X20.


Stone melting snowpack, Tenaya Lake, 1999. 16X20.


Hand and Bristilecone Pine, 1999. 16X20.


Halfdome, 2005. 11X14.


Chris Johnson in the White Mountains, California. This prints really well even though Chris was in a shadow. Holds up to dodging low tones. 11X14. Chris is going to be surprised to see this show up on his facebook page.


Snow, briar, owl feathers, 2011. Going to have another shot at this one tomorrow on some 16X20 Agfa Insignia F4. It's a thin negative. Normally I wouldn't bother with a thin neg, (old Xtol got me), but this was part the Greenbriar Lake work and I needed some snow photos. 11X14


At the Bristlecone Pines. 1999, White Mountains, California. 11X14.

20X24 gone, 16X20 gone, down to making post-card-feeling prints on 11X14. Finished the Greenbriar Lake work. Now just trying this negative and that and different filter combinations. Getting negs back in the right boxes and labeled as well. All images off 5X7 negatives. Allways fun in the darkroom. Using Ilford Multigrade and filters. Copying these right off the drying screens onto digital with a couple of lights set up. Easy.

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.