Buying/selling.

Fuji GSW690.  Objects in this photo are larger than they appear.

  Still moving camera equipment around.  My 250mm, (10 inch), Commercial Ektar is on ebay.  It's replacement, a 250mm, (10 inch), wide-field Ektar is waiting on Monday and a little lens board cutting.  May have found the perfect lens for my 8X10.  Just trading up to get a little bigger image circle.  The new 250 wide field will NOT fit on a lens board for the 5X7.  Too bad, but I do have a 12 inch Commercial Ektar that does.  Won't lose much.  This lens is a slight wide angle on the 8X10.  I like it, so far.  Cut a board out of foam core to look through it on the Big Deardorff.

  Plans being laid for a trip to Shiprock in August after I return from the National Matches.  If the Lord lets me live, of course.

  Bought a Fuji GSW690.  That's a wide angled Japanese 120 film copy of a Leica.  Bought for photographing the morning and evening shadow of Shiprock from the crest over the climbers cave.  If I can't get my 5X7 up there, I will have this.  (8X10 not going.)  And its for snapshots of my dog, of course.  Run a couple rolls for tests and everything looks peachy.  Great looking 6X9 roll film negatives.  It was in Hong Kong, but they got it here chop chop.

8X10 with the new 250 Wide Field Ektar on a couple pieces of black foam core.

  Tap water all the way to 94 degrees.  Wow.

Holy Shiprock.

  I tiptoe around Shiprock like I'm in a cathedral but other folks relate in other ways.  Its a spectacular climb, I'm sure.  This guy climbs to the summit in 1 hour and four minutes and makes a video along the way.  He's not much on surveying the scenery but you do catch some glimpses.  It's quite a video.

  I've been at Shiprock a lot by myself and it's a watchful and careful experience.  I can hardly imagine the experience of going to the very TOP of it by yourself.  Mind-blowing.  Starts in the climbers cave on the West side.  I've got some rock climbing experience in my resume, including some free solo.  I've hardly considered climbing Shiprock.

A summer of shooting and buying stuff.

I'm keeping a cold studio and full film holders.  Stacking up processed but unproofed film.  Mostly neighborhood things.  My Shiprock trip a few weeks back was cancelled by high winds.  Summer can be a terrible time out there.

  In the meantime I am selling old stuff and buying newer off ebay.  Added a couple of lenses and unloaded a ton of old stuff.  Looking for little bits and pieces and getting some old equipment repaired.  I upgraded my Nikon film camera that I will never shoot again, still hanging on to Hasselblad.  I have a full case of Deardorff lenses, three 5X7 bodies, (one waiting on a new bellows), and the 8X10.  Rifle team is taking up almost every weekend between here and the first week in August.  Flying to and from Camp Perry this year and planning a quick Shiprock run in August before school starts again.

  Today I received an old case for the 8X10.  It was really old and decrepit.  When I opened the lid dust rolled out.  Outside I knocked lots of dust and dirt out.  Plan to rip out the insides and paint it while inside and out.  Really awful, but might be just right for the Deardorff and some holders.

  Mat cutting.  A couple new prints up in the house.  Showing portfolio wherever I can.

Passion for photographs, continued:

The cheapest collection ever, the un-famous and random Langham Archive.  Another ebay purchase.  It's a bad idea, because none of them are worth the very little bit I pay for them as soon as I buy them.  That's a bad rule to break.  I use them in teaching and love having them on display around the house, but they aren't worth anything to anyone but me.  Luckily they are cheap, so I'm not over-damaging my budget.  Fascinating to me to see images and think about how the photographer did them and the folks or places involved.

Could any image be, well, stoopid-er than a posed "weather" shot sent in from the suburbs by an amateur?  This wonderful set-up night flash image of a local kid, tea kettle, frozen water and foggy breath....is simply wonderful in intent and execution.  What humor, nerve and technical skill!  I hope the photographer was the toast of the neighborhood!  February, 1966 from Wisconsin. 

The Soledad Mountains, looking North toward Mojave, California, December 1934.  Notes on the back say it is 12:10, 1/100th of a second from 4000 feet with an A1 filter.  Scattered clouds and light haze and dust.  The photographer is flying and shooting, so I assume he is holding the stick between his knees with both hands on the aerial camera.

Another aerial shot.  A Phantom RF-4C overflies elephants on the Plain of Jars, Vietnam in 1966.  Official US Air Force photo service.

A moment in Boston, Mass, 1964 as a fireman struggles to retain balance after being struck by a bursting fire hose.

Posting comments on blogs

Several folks have up captchas where you have to print the word or TWO words to post a comment to prove you aren't a robot.  It's usually undecipherable to me, and after you try a couple of times, and fail, you have to re-type your comment, et.  I notice there are very few comments.

  All in all, I'd just as soon have the robots.  Several sites are missing my comments because I can't get past the test.  I do read the King's English and have a working knowledge of arabic numerals.  They just can't be solved.

  Len Kowitz, this means YOU.

A Blind Beggar of Saigon, 1974.

My photo-junkiness on display.  Even as a wirephoto- not a silver gelatin print, I couldn't resist this image off Ebay.  (9.99, free shipping, modern life.)  What a perfect metaphor for any artist: blind, beggared and groping your way through your life, dependent on the help of others.  Hoping for daily bread and enlightenment.

  I would have a 10-image-a-day addiction right out of the old newspaper archives on Ebay if I indulged myself.  I love art, ESPECIALLY inspired photographic art.  I'm not posting the other 17 I bought.  At least not at present.

  Back to our beggar:  Tragedy like this was common in Saigon in 1974- right before we left and the bottom fell out.  Caption notes that the streets were full of South Vietnamese Army veterans crippled in various ways.  Here he is kneeling on a pad at a traffic sign, cup wired to cane, bag by side.  Lifting his face and hands.  What would he make of a comfortable American with internet, credit cards, Toyota, spoiled dog, et paying homage to him nearly 40 years after this photo was made, (probably without his consent or knowledge.)   He's long gone by now, only scattered memories and this image.  Or maybe he lives hale and revered in the bosum of his family.  Humans are surprisingly tough, resourceful and work well together very often.  Either way, God bless him and his and God bless the photographer who noticed, focused and plucked this moment out of the flow of time.

Other Artists at Work.

Not everyone works in two dimensional art.

Shiprock, West Face.

These are all digital files I shot while waiting on the light to change.  Pretty illuminating to look at them later on computer, bump up the contrast, spot out the birdlime, fuss around with the cropping.

None of them for exhibition, but for the work of it all.  I'll have a better eye puzzling out this wall next trip.

Part of a Shiprock series I shot one morning after sleeping up on a West face ledge.  Under a waterfall the night before.  Safe and dry and glad to be there.  Big lightning storm on the outside and howling rain.  Not a moment of discomfort, though the wind took my hat first thing before I got to cover.  As per usual at Shiprock, I expected a poltergeist to show, though none did.  That evening.

Canyon de Chelly.  Wall stripe sampling while Katie and I took the halfday tour.

Famous old spot I wanted to look at again.

Very complex and engrossing place.

Canyon de Chelly, Arizona.

Katie and I drove to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon in 2010.  It wasn't really a working trip, just more like a trip to show her some of the country.  I took along my 5X7 but didn't unpack it much.  At Canyon de Chelly we stayed in the Thunderbird Lodge, ate at the cafeteria and took a truck tour.  One of the last afternoons at White House overlook I watched the last vendors pack up below and headed off  down the switchbacks with my camera pack.  I spent an hour and a half photographing back and forth in front of White House Ruin, all alone.  The North West wall was going into shadow and the illumination was pretty nice.

A little cropping off the bottom edge helped this a lot.  Needs a little top and sides to be a little freer.  This and a couple other places along the wall would yield to the 8X10, though the underfoot- solid cactus, makes finding a good spot a little tricky.

White House ruin.  450 telephoto.

Wall stripes I have photographed for years.  This is the wide angle view.  Have to perch on a really tilty boulder and do some pretty fancy tripod work to get to this viewpoint.

Great opportunity for a Katie trip.  You can hire jeep tour folks to take you wherever you want to go and wait.  About three days of that ought to get me good and tired of wall stripes in Canyon de Chelly and Muerto.  Choice of a couple of nice hotels.

O'Sullivan

T.H. O'Sullivan and the West.

Dark Cloth Rebuild.

Giving up on a barn at Marblehead during the National Matches at Camp Perry with Katie.

With it over my shoulder as a child in New Mexico on a Spring Break Trip in the late 70s with Ken Sigman.

After a barn roof in Clarksville early this Spring while doe-tagging with Dr. Sneed.

 Way back, in a previous century, long ago when I was a child at college at Sam Houston State in Huntsville, the photo/graphic department was moving a linotype machine out of a space that had been blacked out by a thick black curtain.  The linotype and the curtain looked like they had been there for years.  The curtain was torn down and headed for the trash.  I stepped in and began to rip it into darkcloths for anyone who wanted one.  I'm sure I passed out eight or ten big rectangles of thick, dusty black material.  Nancy and Vickie were handy with sewing machines and hemmed and lined them for several of us.  I had mine backed with white.  I even had an owl feather sewn in.  That was about 1974.

  I've used it exclusively all these years.  Wrapped up in it at Shiprock, packed it around Yosemite, in New Mexico at Canyon De Chelly.  Chris Johnson and I used it for cover at 8900 feet and 49 degree weather when we got stranded overnight going for the Diving Board at Yosemite.  I've taken naps on it, used it as a pillow, but mostly it's lived a career with my Deardorff, in and out of an old used case I bought in Houston or in the camera backpack.  Once in New Mexico my Deardorff survived a Gitzo tripod faceplant down a long slope because it was swaddled in the darkcloth. 

Climber's Cave, Shiprock, this year.

After the Black Giant, Shiprock, this year.

Lake Erie, 2011.

Last year or so it's really gotten rough around the edges.  Even has a hole or two through the middle.  It doesn't have an easy life.  Katie has a little Philipino woman who is a wonder with a sewing machine so today I turned it over to her to repair and rebuild.  Adding a black layer, re-hemming the edge.  I've got a perfect Calumet darkcloth thats never seen a negative made, but I prefer the old one.  Hope it comes through in an incarnation that I like.  It's certainly been a reliable companion.

Update:  30 bucks.  And boy did she do a great job!  Now off to Shiprock in the morning.

Stars with cams.

Too good to pass up!