TSRA Calendar, 2014

  Shot in the studio.  Every year I have to come up with 14 new firearms and 14 new backgrounds.  Sam's Coyote Bar and Grill has been my source the last two years with his collection that hangs at the restaurant.  It was much easier/faster to shoot at the studio than go on location.  Jackson kept things moving along with picking and transporting and giving me a second set of eyes on the photos.

  I set up two shots in the studio and was able to shoot one, move to the other and then go back for a correction if I needed it.  Used the Nikon 300 and the 18-200 DX lens.  Most of the lighting was softboxes with a main and then a big overhead to fill the reflections, plus a silver card for the shadow side.  It was a mess of tape and reflectors plus all the shims and wax globs under the guns.  The Good Doctor Sneed  couldn't make the shoot this year since I had let it go so long but his rifle racks were used on the 3D shots.

 Like most years, it's a little pistol-heavy.  Pistols fit the format and are easier in nearly every way because of their size.  One little soft-box and a silver card.  I stood on an applebox and shot overhead.

Same shot with a background change.  Just out of the shot are the stands, clamps, tape, reflectors, et.  Telephoto at the 200mm end.  Harder to get rifles to relate than you might think.  You don't want to drop a firearm....

Big overhead softbox turned way down is just out of sight overhead.

Adding old vintage cameras.  Some of the shots are pretty similar but they get looked at one at a time for a month, not in a group so it helps cover the similarities.  Plus, you do want them to have the same esthetic.

Here is a different approach.  I've shot a calendar with most of the guns suspended like this.

Always have to have a few new backgrounds.  This is a hand-made building stone from the wreck of a building near Shiprock.

Thanks to everyone who helped!  None of these projects get done alone.  Let's hope it makes the TSRA 100K!

Navajo Fence Art.

  The junction of New Mexico 491 and BIA13 South of Shiprock, New Mexico is a natural meeting, vendor and hitch-hiking hub.  There is plenty of gravel to park on and plenty of traffic on 491 South to Gallup and BIA 13 to points West.  All three corners are littered with handmade signs for vending, church announcements, political campaigns, rodeos, target shoots, et.  Strong, well-built, four-strand barbed wire fences keep the desert back.  Hog wire runs to the corners from 200 yards out.

Wind-held plastic tarp in fence line.

In the fence wire, sometimes, there are paintings.  Stuck there by artists and abandoned.

I've never seen a good painting in the wire, in fact, they are usually disasterous attempts at art that demonstrate what art isn't more than they demonstrate what art is.

   These painting sometimes disappear.  I assume they are taken for decoration, to grace some hogan or trailer of minimal art appreciators.

  Other times, they suffer a different fate.  Like being burned in place.

O. Winston Link.

I hope there are worse things than being locked in your darkroom and forced to print.

Shooting photographers.

Tough job, especially in Egypt.

Proofing Shiprock: West Hill.

The West Hill is a tricky drive and a fairly easy walk, though you are still motivating around at 6500 feet or so.  Its one of those 20 minute up/five minutes down situations.  There is a rock cairn on the top with someone's ashes inside in a container.  Usually has a set of unmatched lizards as well.  I had been there at least twice before.  Three trips up this visit.  The last two I parked my car end-on to the hill so it wouldn't show as much in the negative.

 West Dike in morning light from West Hill.  Probably a light yellow filter.  Cropped to fairly extreme horizontal format, though I am using the whole negative left to right.  Shot with 120 Super-Angulon.

Blue filter from much farther away.  Previous shot is from the dark-capped West Hill.  The Rock Cairn is right on the crown.  Can't wait to print this.  12 inch Ektar or the 450mm Nikkor.

Afternoon shadow of West Hill.  This is about as far South as the shadow swings.  Most of the year the Sun is to the South of this position and the shadow tracks over toward Shiprock on the left.

Rock Cairn, West Hill.  Just after sundown.  Birds use this as a perch it seems.

Nice blue filter shot of the rock from the West.  Cropped a little to the horizontal.