PETFO: Martha's Butte.

  I wanted to take Katie out for a hike to Martha's Butte, a petroglyph, petrified log and Anasazi site about a mile off the road.  There is a famous, (and rare), vertical log partly excavated there as well.

Couple of bottles of water, the Fuji roll film camera and a map in my head.

Easy walk with many footprints to follow.

Sitting on her butte in the shade.

Petroglyph solstice spiral.  Still lined up and accurate, though the people who read it are long gone.  It's October.

Many of the 13-humped snakes are calendars, but this one had about 20 humps with more broken off.

Petroglyphs scattered on boulders, many of which have moved due to erosion in the last 1000 years.

Never know how to read those.

Made a little tricky one-handed climb to the summit blocks.

Southwest  summit block.

From the top I could see blocks that had fallen away and also several other likely petroglyph sites.

North over the bentonite shoulder.

Tourist.

Fuji laying on the North Block.

Maps?  Charms? Claims?

Kokopelli.

Pilgrim in Uggs.

Katie hiked barefoot most of the way back.  

  All kinds of sign, human animals, coyotes, skunk, deer, bobcat in the wash.  Still surface water here and there and they were exploiting it.  Katie walked through every texture.  By the time we got back to the 4-Runner her feet had a solid coating of high-quality Petrified Forest desert mud.  She sat down and I washed her feet with half a jug of unsweetened ice tea that our weekend visitors had left.  It was a very good use for that tea.

PETFO: Project.

  I had a project in mind for the park.  I wanted to photograph petrified logs from the vantage point that you would view if they were standing.  The images would be displayed with the trees back to vertical.  Ranger Kip Woolforth provided access to a ladder and then loaned me a 16 year old volunteer, Connor to carry it around the Long Logs area near the South entrance visitor center.  

A perfect day for shooting in consistent light from 9-2:00.  Not a cloud around.  Got to the mid 80s by the time we ran through my film and water.

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Up the ladder to about 10 feet elevation.  Could have used more but this was all we could get.

The rough idea.  I got Conner to sit on a couple, had the landscape tilted away in some corners, footprints, my shadow coming in from corners, et.  The tree will be vertical and the background will sort out however it sorts.

Conner off climbing mud hills.

Big logs.  I'd looked at them on Google Earth.  Lotta of subject matter when we got there plus a few Jack Rabbits.  

  Used a Fuji 6X9 65mm wide-angle viewfinder camera and Ilford Pan F and FP4.  K2 light yellow on all photos.  Shot about 15 logs from both sides.  We'll see if it makes sense.  A few more to go around the visitor center and the North end of the park.  Ran through about 10 rolls.

Bestiary printing.

  Most of the Bestiary is printed and ready to go to Albany but there is always a slightly better print to be made or a new image.  Into the darkroom!  First, I had to figure out how to set up trays for 20X24 in sinks designed for 11X14.

Rough, but it actually worked pretty well.  1X2 sections balanced on old plastic beakers.  

  Dev, stop,  on the far side, then across to near side for fix and water hold.  Used this side for second fix and toning, then switch out to two wash trays.  I've got some metal trays that would be stiffer but didn't seem to need them.  Trays actually have a slight tilt toward the sink side.

  Enlarger complications.  My ancient Omega E was wall-mounted in my old darkroom but back on it's baseboard in this space.  It doesn't have enough column to make a 20X24.  (180mm lens on it.)  Instead of the old cold light round Omega head it has a newer Modern Enlarger Lamps head...one of the last and only 5X7 heads Cemil made.  It's terrific with filters under the lens.  Next to it is a long-column Zone VI Type II.  The Z6 original variable head is useless, dim and the color and brightness vary across the face.  I replaced it with an Aristo system, driven by a Zone VI timer.  It is so complicated and dim that you just can't use it, but it will run high enough to make 20X24s and larger.  Enlargements run into the minutes....and minutes and minutes.   I finally set THAT side ahead and plopped the Modern Enlarger Head on top of the negative holder.  Then I had to clamp and rig up a bent-wire holder for filters under the lens.  Its an awful Rube Goldberg contraption....but it prints great.  I had a nice Nikkor 210mm on but switched to the 180.  No problems except the awful head moving controls on the Zone VI.  God only knows how much I have spent trying to get that Z6 enlarger to work and it came down to a LED head and baling wire.  Moved the LEKTRA timer over.  So I have a 1950 timer as well.  At least it works so you can quit worrying about the enlarger and PRINT.

Well-behaved negatives.

But they always need something.  Dodging, burning, pre-fog.

Needed a big bug and the curator picked this one.

Never-printed negative of Praying Mantis on a bayonet.

Never printed Jay.

Had to make a decision between these two.

Second day.

 Bullfrog for first print.  It took a bit to get him but ended up with a nice image.  Dodging, but not to excess.

This one gave that impression of being a PERFECT print when the light hit the fix.  Just the right amount of highlight in the coffee cup and open shadows.  

Unprinted.  Looked just right when I was done.  Very delicate in the fingers.

Evil-looking Copperhead that actually bit my nephew making eye contact.  Love making 20X24 prints.

After some spotting, flattening, signing, inventory list, off to Albany with 95% of the show, about a month in front of delivery time.  Opening Feb 27th, 2016.

PETFO: Lacey Point.

  Lacey Point is an archeological site near a little butte a couple miles out in the desert from....Lacey Point. Like most other spots, there isn't a trial or any markers, not is Lacey Point identified on a map or tourist guide.  I got permission, being AIR, to go, but I don't think they thought I would really hike out there.

  But I did.  

  So....without a clear idea of destination or route, I dropped a Hasselblad in a bag, added a couple bottles of water, grabbed binocs, dropped off the mesa and started angling my way to what I thought was probably Lacey Point site.  

  The desert is deceptive in that it may look flat and featureless, even with binocs, but then washes and canyons open up and landmarks drop out of sight then reappear in different shapes depending on where you are.  I kept an eye on where I came from, where the sun was, how much water I had left and ran a clock.  There wasn't a trace of anything except paleo open-air petrified wood mining.  Lithic scatter.  Then, a mile or more out, at the end of a little low boulder ridge I found myself face to face with a nice concentric circle petroglyph. Next to a dog.  Or a deer.  Or a labyrinth.

I'd been using the binoculars on any likely-looking site or varnish/patina looking for petroglyphs.  Harder to spot than you might think.  Lacey point is known for petroglyphs.

  Just beyond that I saw a big shard of pottery.  Use-ware.  Corregated.   Then a flake of flint.  After a few more twists and turns,  the site.

I climbed the butte after a little poking around.  More shards and a metate.  I don't think I had ever seen a metate in the wild.  The grinding stone was next to it.  Has odd little drill or fracture holes in one corner.  Nice place to sit and grind and watch the wash.  If they had only had binoculars...

  Some of the butte has fallen away.  With an eye for it, you can pick out the blocks that have fallen in the boulder field below. 

  The site is set like Martha's Butte- most of the activity on the East face, to catch morning light and shade in the afternoon, overlooking a much larger area with water, (or at least a wash), close.

Several different pottery styles.  Trade-ware.

Some petroglyph boulders had moved around with time.  Some hadn't.

Another nice set of concentrics.

Impressive toes of the leadership.

Good dogging.

Woman giving birth.  Or a man with big fingers.  Nobody knows though the Anasazi were very close to writing.

Shot a couple rolls of film.

More gorgeous pottery.  I put every piece I looked at precisely back where I found it.  This red ware may be a piece of really late Anasazi-ware that was fired with coal.  That turned the normal glazes red with the higher temps available.  Another hundred years, with coal, you start smelting iron.  They didn't get it.  The Spanish were among them.

Finally time to work my way back, far up the mesa just right of center horizon.

Hugging the cliff to avoid running in and out of washes.

Back at the overlook just as the terminator firmed up.