New old used enlarger.

  Problems with printing multigrade papers and enlarger head illumination, (nearly all of them are uneven), led me to start shopping around on Ebay for the last enlarger ever designed...a Zone VI model 2 5X7.  Found one in Washington State and managed to get it for a fair price.  One of those pack-and-ship Fed-Ex/UPS stores overcharged me for shipping it down here, (about 4X what normal shipping might be.)  My current enlarger is a 1955 Omega D3, built for 5X7 with a huge domelight-with-flourescent-tube head.  I've made some great prints with it, but it's awful for even illumination with hotspots at all corners.  If you have a dark negative, it's hardly noticeable but lighter tones are always tough.

  Trading my 60 year old enlarger for a 21 year old one.  There aren't any enlargers from this century.

Omega D3 5X7 coming out.

Zone VI 5X7 going in.

  I'm hoping the ZoneVI is a fix.  Got it in today and now I have to uninstall my D3 and install this one.  Looks great.  Hoping for the best.   All the timers, stabilizers, lenses and negative carriers are coming in at a reasonable rate via the seller and my Fed-Ex account number.

Elwood 8X10.

  The usual disaster.  I have most of an 8X10 enlarger, a corroded Elwood, beached on the studio floor.  I rebought a head I had sold for my D2,  (the aristo now a spare), bought longer lenses and mounted them with great effort on the D3, (still missing one lens flange), now they have to go over to the Zone VI.  Bought another D3 at a bargain off ebay, but they couldn't make a reasonable shipping price from New Jersey so that was cancelled.  Purchased everything twice, as always.  I'll start ebaying out the spare parts I guess.

  This one belonged to Mark Noble, from Washington State.  He bought it in 1991.   His widow is selling his darkroom stuff bit by bit.  RIP Mark, and thanks.

  Going to miss my little stainless steel wire filter holders that I rigged up.

Show delivered in Longview.

  Can't wait to see it hung on the walls.  Always a revelation as to how a curator, in this case Tammy Cromer-Campbell, will sequence and group the prints.  I try to give the installer complete control with only a few notes about what the prints are.  This is quite a selection.  Glad to have this part done.

Friday evening, 5-8, 207 North Center Street in Longview in conjunction with an evening Art Walk.

The official LINK

Opening of the "Eternal Gift", Friday, December 7, in Longview.

A.C. Gentry-designed frame!

At the TCC Photo Gallery, 207 North Center Street, Longview, Texas, 5-8.  Rare chance to see 20+ Langhams hanging in one place.  Some of them from this fall at Canyon de Chelly or Shiprock in August.  Fun to see them in frames.  Prints looking pretty good.  

Fall Darkroom Video.

Rocks.  Trees.  More rocks.  In the darkroom.  Framing some of those prints today.  Really nice.  Took all day to spot, mat and frame four big ones and one small one.

Winter Printing.

  Print in the Fall and Spring to take advantage of water temps.  In the summer it can run up to 95 degrees out of the cold side.  Too hot for the quantity of water needed to print and wash paper.  I look forward to printing season and yesterday went into the darkroom with a fresh 50-sheet box of 20X24. Hard to get more fun than that!

  I can usually print 5-7 negatives in a day, with care.  I'm eager to get a look at some of the new negatives and have a show I have to deliver next week.

This negative had been reminding me that it hadn't ever been printed for a couple of years.  2009 at Clarksville.  Last weekend, as we left the ranch after a hunting session, I drove over and shot a morning shot of the shadow from the same tree.  Then I came home and printed this one.  I have a portfolio: White Trees, of blooming Spring trees.  That got me looking at black trees....and I'm a noticer of shadows....so there you go.

Couldn't wait to see this big.  I think it works.

This had been a raging digital print, but never a darkroom print on real silver paper through trays, et.  Cropped the bottom a little and was careful not to over-contrast it.

You have to be an optimist to point a camera at a rock.  Shiprock, last August.  Shot this for the 4th time.

Canyon de Chelly cottonwood from October trip.

This cleaned up nicely.  I was very suspicious when it printed on the first try after a test strip, though I had printed it small a month ago.

Rock face, CDC.

Seven negatives.  Made for a long day.  First print at 9:30 and finished about 7.  Now let's see how they do in the wall test.

Video alert: Canyon de Chelly up.

Video produced with iphone videos and some bad music.  Katie and Jackson and I.  It's too long and I should have pulled about 10 photos of me and the view cameras, but if you want a peek at the canyon it's pretty good.

New Video up. Shiprock South Dike this last August.

South Dike, Shiprock, 2012  Picked out a nice spot on some tough ground.  Pretty slanty up there.  190 Ektar wide-field in front of a sheet of HP5.

  Photographing the South Dike at Shiprock early on a hazy morning.  Picked out my camera position and then slept on a big split boulder that was almost flat.  Almost.  Just used a little camping pad and a sleeping bag cover.  I'm supposed to be an expert at this and everything was good enough while being ridiculous at the same time.  Didn't want to sleep on the ground because of grit and snakes, plus the packrats.  I was right under the Black Giant which I have always considered home base for Shiprock Poltergeists.  (Just below me was where one tore a perfectly good Fuji 120mm view camera lens in HALF on an early visit.  Then some Navajo kids stole the halves.)  They don't seem to bother me much anymore but it might be because the prefer you to be alone so you carry a sense of paranoia along for the ride.  Had a packrat visitation in the night.  A little distant poltergeisting out in the air over the slope.  (Where are the owls when you need them?)  The last morning we were there.  After this we packed up and headed back to Texas.

Back in the pool.

  Jackson wanted to see the olympic pool in the brush so Katie, me, he and Red Chief went out for a late afternoon look.

It needs the color.

Same shot in black and white.

I was just carrying my iphone again.  Katie was photographing with hers and got some very skillful shots. Jackson had a nice Nikon.  Megan was shooting with her phone.  We peeled the pixels off the scene.  Quite a site to work in.

  

Enlarger Games.

Water crossing the road, Smith County, Texas.

  I've been trying to upgrade and improve my timers, lenses, and enlarging heads to get better results out of multigrade papers.  Ebay is the best source for this kind of stuff.  I'm having trouble with the color of my cold light heads on an Omega D2, which prints up to 4X5 and an Omega D3, which prints up to 5X7.  There are bargains on lenses so I bought a couple- but one of them, so far, is missing a retaining ring so I haven't been able to mount it.  That's a typical problem.  You can find what you need.....almost.  You have to keep looking for pieces and parts.

  I changed heads on the D2 to try and improve the color of the light. I switched from an Aristo Grid head and Zone VI stabilizer back to an old Omega florescent light head.  The D2 was too blue.  I think I helped it.  Hard to be sure until I print a little more.

  Bought a twin to my big Omega D3 5X7 from an ebay seller in New Jersey.  It was a bargain but they had vastly underestimated what it would cost to ship.  Of course I paid in full...but then they started balking when they actually tried to send it.  They won't ship or respond so I opened a case to get money back.  While I was waiting on that debacle I bought a late model Zone VI enlarger with a head set up for 5X7 and multigrade paper.  Its in Oregon.  Many extras.  I think they will figure out a way to get it to me.  The only question is the number of dollars.

  That's a major change from what I was using.  Going to be interesting to get it in and start working.

The Dot at Shiprock.

Shiprock.

Abandoned swimming pool.

  Playing Indian Guide to an out of town photographer and photoshoot.  We were at Love's Lookout and I walked through the brush to look at the old pool there.

Normally a black and white guy but this looks like color images all the way.

The portholes were big lensed underwater lights.

This porthole has one of the best stains there is.

The delicate aqua shades were the real surprise.

Went here as a kid once or twice.  Horrible opaque water and muck on the bottom in the deep end.  There was a retractable shade for a strip across the shallow end.  In it's day it was a very sophisticated place, part of a big amusement park.

I was just touristing with my iphone.  Needs a serious camera in there.

Update:  Getting amazing feedback.  Need to get a digital, level and tripod into there.  Very unusual for this spot not to be defaced with graffitti, so the clock is probably ticking.  On the other hand, I don't have a color portfolio.  Wouldn't this have looked good in Polaroid Type 59!