Art time with a little longer blink.

  Trying to proof all my negatives so that I can die feeling complete.  Knocked off a box today of sleeved, numbered and logged negatives that had never been proofed.  It was from about 1978-80.  4X5 view camera work downtown mostly with a Sinar F.

iphone copies of the proofs.  Always fun to see these old images for the first time in 30 years since I saw them on the ground glass of the camera.  I still have the camera.

Working on still life.

Has to move or be in in transition in some way, can't just be a collection of objects.  I think of them as momentary still lifes.  Using the 8X10 Deardorff, one soft box, silver card reflector and light dams to control the lighting. Remembering a few tricks I forgot or haven't used in a decade.  Just getting going it seems.  Freezing things takes overnight or longer and looks like most of them are going to take several "takes" so it's several days at the least.  In art time that's just a blink.

  Here's the process on one I am working on.  It's harder on the props than you might think- I'm destroying/breaking things all the time or I'm working with something that won't last.  Broke the cup, my wishbone and had a dice get away for a while.

First day try.

Close, but no cigar.

Couple days later:

Roughed out and shedding items.

This is about the end.  Now I have to do it again.

New idea for still life.

Amazing how new ideas just pop up in your mind.  Not quite ready for the details but I'm interested in still life photographs.....but the still lifes have to be alive, moving, melting, burning, spinning, flowing, et.  Photographing an assemblage of things and calling it art...well, isn't the assemblage art and the photo just a copy?  I like a still life that photography has unique capabilities to capture.  So I've been thinking.  Came up with a new idea.  Working out the details and have already learned several things.  A lot of photography is just handling the details.

Natalie White at the ROX Gallery.

Friend of Peter Beard, who has had a great life.

Camino

  Bill Bennet, and Aussie filmmaker and photographer is walking a 500 mile pilgrimage in Spain and blogging.  Many photographs and an interesting experience.  He's got a nice eye and a commentary to go with it.  Worth the visit.

Hasselblad discontinues film camera

Hasselblad with 50mm wide angle back in 1975 or so.

Sorry to see this end but perfectly understandable.   I must have shot thousands of rolls of film, polaroid out of a polaroid back, et with mine.  Dad bought my first one for me in 1972.  Had one ever since.  Now that film has gotten obsolete I shoot only sheet film in holders, hardly ever any rolls.  Jackson took one to Canyon de Chelly last year.

Jackson last year with the 50mm I shot the photo above with....37 years before!

Classic, flexible and wonderful camera.  I'm sure I will use mine a little more.

Mont St Michele, afternoon shadow: Video.

With the firm belief that it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission:  Over the wall and off into the construction scaffolding.  Great afternoon to watch the shadow run all the way out.

  No hardhat.

View from up on the wall.

Was able to find a spot out of the wind.  Nobody noticed me as far as I could tell.  Scaffolding quite secure.

They were doing reconstruction/conservation on this area.  Scaffolding all the way to the mud below.  Very impressive.

Much construction/repair going on while the new bridge was being built.  Probably trying to get it all done this year.

Shiprock names.

  I've been wandering around Shiprock since the early 70s....last century.  2014, (if we live), will make 40 years of wandering in the desert.  Since then I have named various points and areas and used them and heard them used by others.  I think "Molly's Nipple" was about the first and the "Bone Shrine" the latest.  (It's a shrine.  With bones.  Found last year.)  There is the Dance Floor, the Meteorite, the Climber's Cave, Climber's Cave Ledge, the Black Giant, the White Tower, the Pulpit, the Dot, the Wing, the Big Hawaiian, the North Buttress, East, West and South Dikes, (more description than names)  I wonder what names others use?  For instance, the North Buttress is called the Tugboat in some climbers descriptions.  Gotta be some.

The Black Giant, a dark volcanic intrusion over the South Dike.

Deardorff in the Climber's Cave pointed at a little anasazi rockwork.

The Pulpit with evening shadow.

Deardorff pointed at the Dot.

Climber's Cave ledge.

Climber's Cave Ledge.

On the Pulpit.

Raven on the West Dike.

Unsolved problem.  Never managed to find a light or a viewpoint for these guys at the end of the West Dike.

 
 

Shiprock Sundial.

The most compelling thing about Shiprock is the solitude of the experience of being there.  One can be alone in a room but to be alone in a huge empty space with light and air is quite another experience.  Beyond that, its a visual feast.  Canyon de Chelly is like being inside a sculpture, Shiprock IS a sculpture.

  It's also a heck of a sundial, and I've structured most of the many days I have spent there around being in position for the early and late shadows forming up and making a run to the rock or to the horizon.

A little platinum contact of the afternoon shadow from the pulpit.

Morning shadow over off the West Dike.

Late evening shadow about to jump into the atmosphere as the powerplant fires up.  Pulpit in foreground.

Afternoon shadow with Pulpit in foreground.

Molly's Nipple and the East Dike in the afternoon.

East Dike from the North Buttress.

East Dike from the North Buttress.

East Dike.

Afternoon shadow from the North Buttress.

North Buttress view.

The Wing and afternoon shadow.

Road, shadow.

Road and shadow #2.

West Dike and Morning shadow.

Morning Shadow, 1996

Morning shadow, 2012

Morning shadow and West Dike.

Morning Shadow from Climber's Cave Ledge.