The Map is not the Territory. You can't tape the territory together.

Working on a map for a guy who is going out West to Shiprock.  Fired up the printer and then taped the results together.  Makes a fairly compelling map.

South Dike from the BIA13 cut to the main rock.

West Dike and South Dike.

Still working.

Working away.  Letting ideas evolve.  Tore down the shell and crockery and started stacking dice in half a cup.

Without studio lights on, just checking the base set-up.

On the ground glass with the light on.

Next one.  Got a little bit of work to do yet.  Gotta twist the dice.  Elevate the spoon at the balance point.  Add a couple of old coins.  Move the wishbone to the shadow.  Move the ivory button on the end of the spoon.  Might twist the spoon in a vise.  Clean up the bullet in the clothes pin angle so it reads a little better.  Just styling moves.  I shot two pieces of film and shouldn't have.  I can process it and look at my exposure.  It's two exposures, one for the flame and one for the rest of the image.  F45 which is at LEAST 64 in this case due to bellows extension.

Still life-ing in the studio

  Nautilus and seashells are old news.  Been done.  Still, I'm having a good time with some 100 year old busted crockery, broken and complete shells, lighting, 8X10, et.

Using an Ektar 250 Wide Field lens from the 50s or earlier.  The Ektar is an old lens but I like the angle of view and perspective.  I'm not sure this camera is going anywhere else but right now it's working in the studio.

There's the old monster with a light shade clamped to the side.  I use more camera controls than you might think shooting still life images.  I appproach them like little buildings and either look up, down or straight in at them.

The busted cup group:  Conneticutt.  Canyon de Chelly.  Shiprock.  Texas.

I'm using light dams and scrims and reflectors, et.  Every still small-product trick in the book.  I have a box of old crockery I picked up on a hotel photoshoot 20 years ago up in Conneticutt. (I was interested in the creek full of old busted dinner-ware than I was in the photoshoot, though the client was happy at my hotel results.  There had been THREE hotels on that site, it turned out and the old ones just tossed trash out the back door into the creek.)   The tin funnel was given to me by Debbie Fleming Caffery that has been sitting around the studio for 30 years.  Ebay Nautilus and a broken nautilus whose origin I have forgotten.

Learning.  Light from the wrong side.

  Figuring exposure and contrast with a Pentax spot meter.  Not using strobes, just Dynalite modeling lights in little softboxes.  By the time you cipher the bellows extension, the reciprocity departure and then cut the development time a bit for the extra contrast brought on by the long exposure, you are juggling lots of cats.

  Fun process.

Wish I could enlarge 8X10.

This assembly is probably still in place in front of the camera, unless overnight vibrations got it.  It has a soft place to fall if it all tumbles down- that cost a nautilus to learn.  I'm going to go pull the trigger on it sometime today.  19 pieces of 8X10 film left.

  The water temps are going to fall.  Outside the first cool air front of the season is raining its black heart outside right now.