Photographing the South Dike.

Last morning.  Spent a night on a big flat boulder in the wind.  Had a little packrat that kept climbing on me.  Very persistent.  Morning pretty still.

Climbers Cave ledge at Shiprock.

Pretty quiet up there.  Shows the ledge and my bedroll and cam.  I'm as far to the North on the ledge as I could go.

Short video on the second morning on the ledge, West Wall near the climbers cave.  I spent three nights on the ledge and in the cave.  One other night on top of a boulder around the corner.  Quite a strenuous climb to get up here with any equipment, though the climbers come right through here all the time.  Start to the ascent is up the roof of the cave.

Equipment details.

Chinese rubber lens hoods in 77mm and 67mm. Might help.  Always worried about vignetting. 

For a minute, we actually had FOUR Deardorff 5X7s in the house.  That's mine in the middle with an Ektar Wide-Field 190 on it.  Close one in an incredible rebuild by Ken Hough.  Far one just got a new bellows from Western Bellows in LA. (which is closing)  There was one more in a box going to Western Bellows for a new bellows.

Follow-up work.

The Black Giant.

Happily burning film.

  This reminds me of the fun, strategizing and long zen-like time-packages of deer hunting....then one shot and you are up to your elbows in hauling, dragging, cutting, buttering, cleaning.   Blood and guts.  The other part of being an artist.

  Absolutely worked at Shiprock for four days.  Camera, pack and careful footwork up, down and around, sleeping on the rock every night in place for the next morning light.  Back home and the processing and lab work starts.  120+ sheets processed, then proofed, now matching the negatives and proofs, sleeving, sorting, tossing.  The editing process.

  On my last Light Impressions 5X7 box.  Low on sleeves and envelopes.  There isn't a functional Light Impressions, any more.  Hard to know where the support and storage materials are going to come from.

  Putting the negatives IN ORDER of shooting.  That's quite a memory feat.  Then I'll look through them a few more times, check the tap water temp and start printing a few.

  Interesting to see the failures.  Some technical stuff.  Pinholes, light leaks in the holders.  Sweaty fingerprints from loading film in a bag in the daytime.  All those negatives and proofs go by the wayside.    I shoot doubles-both sides of a film holder, and return several times to the same subject in different lighting conditions.

  One of the main shots I wanted and worked on never came together.  I was shooting a photo of the main body of Shiprock from the South.  90mm vignetted like heck.  120 Angulon wasn't quite wide enough.  Never got the light I expected.  10 negatives shot in three attempts.  All gone.

  After I get them firmly in the box and in sequence it's going to be fun to work them out.  Might get one more quick trip to the rock and looks like we are going to Canyon de Chelly the first part of next month to shoot a bit.

  I'll never get caught up with printing.

Morning shadow to the West for 45 seconds.

Climbers Cave rockwork.

Update:  All in the box.  34 different scenes.  120+ negs cut down to aprox 90 due to pinholes in the sky, fingerprints, flare.  Always had a backup so I didn't lose a scene though a few didn't make it past the edit.  Just thumbed through looking for the hits and there are about 14 I would put in the portfolio.

Brancusi at Shiprock.

  One little proof from the Shiprock negatives.  Just getting into the negatives.  I'll know a lot more when I get these done.  Already looking at a few in mats.

  Spotted this from the road a couple hundred yards away.  We drove much closer and found a whole wall of pretty interesting stuff.

A little Anasazi rockwork in the Climber's Cave.  One of two little pieces of rockwork at Shiprock.

This ought to make a pretty nice print.  Its a nice combination of things that are REALLY there, like rocks, dikes, little peaks, plains.....and the transitory: light and shadow.

Proofing, then the edit begins.

  All the negatives processed and contact proofing started today.  I've seen these images once, in my head, again on the ground glass, as negatives and now I'm printing them on normal contrast paper to see what they actually look like.

  Bear in mind- I MECHANICALLY set the composition with a tripod and ground glass.  That's a lost art now and not to be underestimated.  Years of time and thousands of negatives carefully composed with a double axis: one tilting the camera left and right and the other pointing it up and down.  I usually level the camera and use controls- rise and fall of the front lens, to set the image.  I'm not just waving a digital around and zooming in and out.  I'm very carefully setting the negative space around the subject.

  Considerable pains were taken to climb to certain view points, set up the camera and tripod and be there when the light might be at it's optimum.  These are highly edited images with an enormous amount of visual, imaginary and intellectual input.....already, and the kill rate during the proofing is STILL going to be over 50%.

  So now they go through another edit.  I'll pick the ones I actually might want to print from the proofs.

  Negatives with any defect go by the wayside.  The picks will probably go in a mat for a bit to see how they do on the wall.  If they pass the wall test I'll take them into the darkroom for a print.

Ilford HP-5 5X7, all processed.

  Took more than five liters of X-tol 1:1 @ 68 degrees.  Used an 8X10 tray for developer.  Had a few exposures aren't as consistent as I hoped.  I think it was the use of many lenses all with different shutters.  The old shutters, running slow, gave me some overexposures.  Nothing too extreme but I expect them to be perfect as carefully as I meter, filter and take slow shutters into consideration.  Now on to the proofing.  120 pieces of film, probably 40 different scenes.  I shot some of them more than once on different days under different lighting.  

120 sheets of 5X7

Deardorff with 12 inch Commercial Ektar and a nice shade on it.  The shutter on this one needs work, but in general I made some good guesses on settings and came out OK on the exposures.

  Starting to process the film.  Ran three sets of eight sheets in trays this afternoon.  Fresh X-Tol film developer.  They are looking oK.  I'm jumping around from box to box and just pulling a few per run from the last loaded film holders.  Not in a hurry.  Got a little roll film as well.

  Couple ruined by light streaks.  Need a really good shade on the 450 I think.  Generally they look pretty good.  It's a slight struggle with process and wash temp since the water out of the cold side is running up into the 80s.  I think the water main near the studio must be near the surface of the hot brick street.  The rains overnight cooled it down.  It can get near 100.

Update: will all my repeats and do-overs in different light, about 40 different scenes.

Shiprock: South Dike.

iphone images of the South Dike as I came and went.  Some of these from when I was set up and shooting with my Deardorff 5X7.

Light coming and going in large swatches one morning.  Dike from Shiprock looking South.  I'm up on  a big boulder on the Southwest talus slope.

Mid-morning light from the left.  

 Early morning.  Look at the nearly complete shadow on the right.  6:58 or so.  In position I had picked and climbed to in the dawn.

Black and white version of above.

Morning, still before 8:00.  Light from the left.  Longer lens.  Too close to the wall.

Wider view of above.

Afternoon, 5:00pm.  Light from the West.  I'm closer and lower.

 Up and further on the trail, afternoon.  Climbing rope.

Last morning.  Utah fire smoke diffused the morning light, but it's mostly from the left.

Shiprock August run.

  Just sent my camera off with Greg Jackson to Shiprock.  I'm going to fly to Albuquerque and meet him on Sunday, then about four days on the rock.  I've got an ambitious schedule to shoot, mostly on the West side, plus some exploring.  Can't wait to get on the rock.  Planning on sleeping each night on a ledge on the West side.  Also hoping to see a good thunderstorm.

Chaco last Spring.

4-Runner at the North Face.  I'm sure I am in that image somewhere, struggling up to the North Buttress.

Katie shot these with her phone.  

Lucy at Shiprock.  I'm somewhere up that slope in the background.

Horst.

Horst is gone but leaves us lots of photos.