Farewell to Buckskin Gulch
February 4th, 2012
We didn’t spend a lot of time in Buckskin Gulch. Soon it was time to turn around and head back out through Wirepass Canyon. So this shot of Brooke, taken with my 12-24mm lens at 12mm, will be the last slot canyon photo from the trip.
This month is turning out to be quite a month for gallery shows. It’s been keeping my very busy just getting all the prints made, framed and shipped off to the various shows. Right now I have three prints in the show at the Darkroom Gallery in Essex Junction, Vermont. I’ll have prints in both the Dirty Show in Detroit and Nude Nite Orlando, both opening next weekend. Then there’s the “You’ll Find This Offensive” show in at the Red Door Space gallery in Pittsburgh on February 24 and Nude Nite Tampa the first weekend in March.
I still need to frame the prints from Pittsburgh and Tampa, but everything else is done. With some luck, maybe someone will buy a print or two and I’ll at least break even on all the costs involved in shows like these. And, of course, there are more shows coming up to enter.
The Story of a Photo
February 1st, 2012
Word arrived last night that I have a photo accepted for Nude Nite Tampa. The photo they chose is this one that I did of Carhenge with Brooke and Kat on our trip out west last fall. It’s nice to see this photo getting some recognition because it was a long time coming.
I first visited Carhenge shortly after it was built in 1987. I thought then, and still think today, that it is a great work of truly American art. What could be more American than to take something ancient and British and reproduce it in a corn field using junk cars? It’s brilliant. Way back then I was quoted in a national magazine saying Carhenge was the greatest work of art done in America in the decade. I stand by that comment.
And, way back then, when Alliance, Nebraska was still trying to get it removed, calling it “a junkyard too close to the road,” when I first saw the place, I saw this photo. I knew I had to take it…I couldn’t get the photo out of my mind. That’s how it is with me when I get an idea for a photo. It won’t go away until I somehow get it taken.
Over the years I returned to Carhenge a number of times, but never with all the elements I needed to make this photo. Several years ago I went there with Brooke and tried to do a photo with her modeling after dark using strobes to paint in each car with Brooke beside it. I bought a bunch of expensive equipment to do that photo. But with just Brooke and I…with me stumbling around in the dark…I just couldn’t get all that technology to work right and I failed to get the shot. I decided that it would require a full team of models and assistants to make that shot happen…and that, well, it just wasn’t worth the effort and cost involved.
But, on this last trip, with two wonderful models available, I thought I’d try it with less technology, dropping the painting with light approach and instead shooting it at dawn. We were on our way to Alliance to give it a try when that deer leaped out of the pre-dawn darkness and altered our plans.
But, after getting things settled in our deer-imposed hostage situation in Alliance, I managed to rent a car and we got up at dawn and went out to Carhenge, a few miles outside the town, to give this photo a try. And this time it worked. Obviously it isn’t a straight photo, but there’s not a lot of photoshop work involved. I simply set the camera up on a tripod and did a series of photos with Brooke and Kat moving from place to place. Then I just stacked the best shots in photoshop and erased them so that the portions with the lovely models showed. A simple process.
And there you have it…I’ve added the one missing element from this great work of art: The beautiful naked young women dancing around the site as the sun rises. Perfect!
I’m glad the jury for the Tampa show agreed. If you are in the Tampa area, go to the show and check out the print. A couple clicks on the photo here will also let you take a look at it in a larger size.
Into Buckskin Gulch
January 28th, 2012
After the open area Wirepass Canyon ends when it flows into Buckskin Gulch. That’s where these photos of Brooke and Kat were taken. Buckskin Gulch is a very different canyon from Wirepass. It is much deeper and much, much longer. In fact it is the longest and deepest slot canyon in the southwest…maybe in the world. It is 12 miles long, ending at the Paria River, which flows on into Lake Powell. The canyon is as deep as 500 feet. It’s a bit dark down in there…but it’s a beautiful darkness.
We only explored a short distance in Buckskin Gulch, going for a short hike in each direction, upstream and downstream. It takes more than a day hike to explore Buckskin Gulch. Maybe I’ll try hiking it all the way some year…but I doubt it. One time when I was down there I saw people hiking up from the Paria River. They were covered head to toe in mud. At that particular time, also October, there were pools of water in Buckskin that had to be waded…and they weren’t shallow pools. They required taking off your backpack and holding it over your head while you waded in water that left just your head above the surface. Not my kind of hiking.
Out of Wirepass
January 22nd, 2012
Back to our hike down the slot canyons. Before Wirepass Canyon leads you to Buckskin Gulch it opens out into a beautiful open space. When we got there it just seemed that a couple of the niches in the rock wall were meant to contain Greek sculptures…or beautiful figure models. Since I had beautiful figure models hiking with me, Kat and Brooke took up the appropriate positions and these photos resulted. Lovely Greek sculptures.
Joel Belmont is a friend. It happened that while I was in Page with Brooke and Kat, Joel was out on nearby Lake Powell leading a nude photography workshop. When I heard about the workshop I contacted Joel to see if we could meet up for lunch or something while we were both in the area, but his schedule didn’t allow it.
Joel has just finished a brief video about his workshops out on Lake Powell. If you think you’d like to shoot nudes in this beautiful area but don’t feel comfortable just doing it on your own, Joel’s workshop would be a great way to do it. Here’s the video (if I can get it to embed):
Now back to the football game.
More Shows
January 20th, 2012
I love that photo of Kat in Wirepass Canyon. And it looks like I’m not the only one. I’ve gotten notice that it was selected for exhibit at Nude Nite Orlando on Feb. 9, 10 and 11 in, obviously, Orlando, Florida. This is the first time I’ve entered this show, so I’m very pleased both that they accepted one of my photos, but also that it was one of my favorites…and that the model is also one of my favorites…and a Florida person to boot. I’m not going to be able to make the trip down to Florida for the show, but I hope to hear about it from some of my Florida friends and maybe see some photos of my print on the wall through their good graces.
I’ve also had a photo accepted for another show in Pittsburgh at the end of February. That show is “You’ll Find This Offensive.” My entry was a bit of a departure for me from the kind of thing I post here, but we all need some variety in our work from time to time. This particular departure was an attempt to do some commentary on all the fetish photography that is all over the web by shooting some faux-fetish photos that make absolutely no sense at all. A difficult challenge given that there is probably someone, somewhere with a fetish for every single object on the planet. But, I think I came up with several that achieve this difficult goal. And one of them was chosen for this show. If you want to see it, though, you’ll have to go to the show because I’m not going to post it here. It’s a one-night show and auction on Feb. 24. I do plan to attend this show, since it’s an easy drive for me. Say hi if you go too.
2257 Lawsuit
January 14th, 2012
As some of you may remember, I’m a named plaintiff in the on-going lawsuit seeking to have the law commonly known as 2257 and 2257A declared unconstitutional.
There were oral arguments presented at the Federal Appeals Court level this past week. The court has posted an audio file of the arguments on their web site. It’s about an hour long, but if you listen to it you will get a very good presentation of the issues that we are trying to present in court involving this law . If you’ve wondered what 2257 is about, you will be able to learn that if you listen to this audio argument.
http://www.ca3.uscourts.gov/oralargument/ListArguments7.aspx
You have to click on the case, which is: FreeSpeechCoalitionEtAlvAttyGenUSA.wma
Back In The Canyon Again
January 13th, 2012
Back to our little hike down Wirepass Canyon with Brooke and Kat. This is actually a pretty short canyon, as slot canyons go. It’s also very easy to get into and out of and, because it is so short, it’s also much less dangerous than some canyons. And it’s beautiful. One of my favorite places.
I’m pretty well settled into using Nikon View NX2 for my RAW processing now. I’m getting the results I’m after. The colors look right to me, and I’m getting used to the program and not having all that many issues with it. So I’ve decided to stick with it and not buy any of the other programs that I downloaded trials for. View NX2 does the job and doesn’t cost anything…that’s a win for me.
And, just as I arrived at this decision, lo and behold, Adobe decided to listen to the chorus of complaints that I was a part of and change their decision about doing away with upgrade pricing for older versions of PhotoShop. I’m sure it must have been because of my complaint. ;-) So it looks like I’ll lift my boycott of Adobe products and that I’ll be buying CS6 when it is released later this year. But I still plan to use Nikon View NX2 for my RAW processing, even after I get CS6 which will also have the capability to convert the RAW files from my Nikon D7000. I just like the way the Nikon program handles the files better than what Camera Raw does.
Do You Have Your 2012 Calendar Yet?
January 10th, 2012
Yes, it’s 2012. Have you ordered your 2012 calendar yet?
If not, you may know that now is the time to save a bundle on calendars. And that’s true at my store too. Until the end of January you can get 40% off your calendar order by entering the code: NEWYEAR345 at checkout.
Click on any of those calendar cover photos to go directly to the store page for that calendar. You can preview each calendar in the store to see all the photos. Hurry up and order before too much of 2012 is gone.
Back to Wirepass Canyon
January 8th, 2012
I hope you aren’t getting tired of slot canyon photos because we are still wandering (if you can wander on a path that is 2 feet wide and has walls 200 feet high on each side…kinda hard to get off the path) down Wirepass Canyon and haven’t even gotten to Buckskin Gulch yet. But we are getting close to the intersection.
That’s Brooke above, of course. And this may be the best use I was able to make of my new fisheye lens that I bought because I thought it would be perfect for slot canyon use. Would you have known this was a fisheye photo if I hadn’t told you? This was a wide place in the canyon…I must have been as much as 4 or 5 feet away from Brooke when I shot this frame. I’m thinking the lens paid for itself at this instant.
Of course it wasn’t far before the canyon got narrow again. And I went back to my 12-24 lens. This is what major portions of this canyon looks like. And that’s what the beautiful and talented Kat looks like when she poses for me.
And here, just a little farther down the canyon, we have both Brooke and Kat. Again I was using the 12-24. If you look closely you can see that we’ve actually only moved about 20 feet or so from the photo of Kat above. One of the problems working in these canyons is forcing yourself to stop and move along because there’s a new photo every 10 feet or so. It requires some mental editing to chose the best spots and reject those that are only wonderful, not incredibly wonderful.
And, for those who are following my technical adventures as I work on these photos, I went back to using Nikon View NX2 for these three photos. I inspected them closely for any signs of the color blocking that I saw on some of the earlier photos and could find none at all. So, I’m thinking that, with care to watch for any problems that might come up, View NX2 is going to be my main software. My workflow also includes opening the tiff file that is output from NX2 in PhotoShop CS4 and doing some minor adjustments of levels and, sometimes some “dodge and burn” stuff using layers. I also sharpen in PhotoShop rather than in NX2…though I’ll probably be doing some experimenting to see what sharpening routine I like best, but for now I know how I like to sharpen in PhotoShop and I don’t want to introduce that as a new variable until I’m pretty solid on how I’m doing things with NX2.
Upcoming Shows
January 4th, 2012
I’m going to take a break from posting the slot canyon photos and tell you about a couple gallery shows that are coming up that will have my work on display.
First, when I entered the landscape show at the Darkroom Gallery in Essex Junction, Vermont, I had actually gone to their site to check out a call for entries to a nude show they were planning. Of course I also entered the nude show, The Human Form. The results of the jury process were announced just as I returned home from my visit to Vermont. I’m very pleased that I will have three photos in that exhibit, which opens later this month. I’m particularly pleased about this show because the juror was Elizabeth Opalenik who is a wonderful photographer. It’s fun to know that she liked my work enough to chose three of my photos for the show.
You can find all the details about this show at the link, and see the entire show on line.
These are my photos that will be included in “The Human Form”:
This one is a special photograph for me because it marks the beginning of my work with the figure in nature. It was at this shoot on the coast of Maine that I had the epiphany that this was the work I was meant to be doing as a photographer. It’s been nearly 10 years since I took this photo and I’m still doing primarily figure in nature photographs.
This second photo is the most successful photograph I’ve ever taken, at least if you count popularity as success. I love this photo and many others seem to share that love. I like it in particular because it is exactly the photo I had pre-visualized and went out to capture. And it features one of the best models I have worked with, Lani, who understood just what I was trying to do with the photo and knew exactly how she needed to look as she laid there in that freezing mountain stream.
And, finally, she chose this more recent photo featuring my favorite model, Brooke, also freezing in a mountain stream.
If you are in the Vermont area I think you’d enjoy seeing this show. Check it out.
And, I also received notice that I’ll again be in the Dirty Show in Detroit next month. I’ve been in this show many times now. At first it took a bit of arm twisting to even get me to enter it. I didn’t think it was an appropriate place for my work. But they kept after me to enter saying they wanted work like mine to “class it up.” I don’t know if I do that with my entries, but I keep getting in the show. Every year I shoot a few things that are more erotic than my normal work and enter some of it, but also enter some of my regular figure work. And it seems that every year they chose the more tame, non-erotic work for the show. This year they chose one of my shots from Coyote Buttes from the trip this past fall, featuring, of course, the lovely Kat and Brooke:
And one last note. That photo that is going to the Dirty Show is also the January photo on my Coyote Buttes 2012 Calendar. You can still get my calendars at that link or by clicking the calendar photo over to the right.
