Vermont
January 9th, 2009
The trip to Vermont over the new years weekend was a good trip, but very cold. I usually try to do a little bit of landscape photography on these trips even if I don’t shoot with a model. But when the thermometer in the van is hovering in the neighborhood of 0F degrees I feel a strong incentive to not see anything that requires me to get out of the car to shoot it.
But every time I’m up there I tend to take this photo you see above. That farmstead is in the view out of my mother-in-law’s living room window. I shoot it through the window simply because that is the only camera location that gives me the composition I’m after. I’ve tried walking all over the yard and road in front of the house, and this is the best angle. But I can’t get the elevation outside the house. So I shoot through the window standing in the living room. It’s warmer there too this time of year. I love the composition and I love seeing how it looks different at different times of year and in different weather. They seem to have painted or sided the house since the last time I shot it, so the color scheme is now different in a way I enjoy.
Life away from the interweb is still real busy right now. My younger daughter is still home from college and my older daughter likes to come over in the afternoon with my new grandson. Life is good. But I’ll be back to posting more often soon.
Quite An Honor
December 30th, 2008
This has been a very good year for me personally and artistically, despite the awful events with the economy. And today it got even better when I learned that Lin and Rich over at Fluffytek had awarded a “Golden Fluffy” to me for “Best Blog Image of the Year.” Wow! I’m amazed that Lin singled out one of my photos for such praise. And, needless to say, I’m extremely pleased to be so honored. Thank you Lin and Rich.
Happy Holidays
December 28th, 2008
That’s what I’m having these days, happy holidays. It’s been a very nice, but very busy Christmas season this year. When I haven’t been hosting my immediate family at my house I’ve been traveling to other relatives’ homes to enjoy celebrations with them. This is the first year in several that all my children have been able to be at our house at the same time for Christmas. And it’s the first Christmas with my son-in-law and with my newly-born first grandson. So it’s been a very happy time.
And it will continue this coming week with a trip to visit relatives in Vermont. Hoping for good weather for the drive. It will be a short trip this time, so no time to do any figure photography, though you may get to see a new landscape photo here if I see something worth shooting besides the family gatherings.
So, that’s my excuse for not posting much recently. I’ll try to pick things up after the new year begins. We’ll see if that happens. I have one shoot scheduled for this coming week before we leave. That will be a studio dance shoot with one of the best dancers from Ohio University’s School of Dance. A few more of their best dancers will be visiting the studio for photos in January if all goes well.
The deadline for the Krappy Kamera exhibit at the Soho Photo Gallery is this week. I’ve already mailed my entries to them, so I’ll be looking at other shows to enter in the coming weeks. But I thought I’d go ahead and share a photo taken quite a few years ago with my old Sima soft-focus lens. This is not one that I entered in the contest this year, though it may go to next year’s contest. It was shot in New Albany, Indiana in 2004. The model is Nnetti who lived in New Albany at the time. I hope to work with her again this year when I’m in Florida.
Reruns and Politics (and Political Reruns)
December 21st, 2008
I’ve posted this photo before. I shot it in Hawaii (on a beach, though you’d never know that if I didn’t tell you) with Leona Anne back in September. I enjoy watching the lives of my photos. Some immediately strike me as successful photos, but soon or eventually they lose their charm and I no longer find them interesting. Some are overlooked at first but gradually find their way to the top of the pile. Some are clearly fine photos, but because they get so much attention I eventually grow tired of them and find myself wishing people would pay more attention to my newer work.
I think this photo of Leona is different. It immediately struck me as a great success. It accomplishes what I wanted it to do. It was pre-visualized. As soon as I saw those plants I knew exactly what I wanted to do with them and Leona. And I was fortunate to have a model with me who could understand what I was after and pull it off. The photo continues to draw me. I’ve made it the wallpaper on my desktop, partially as a test to see if I could dull my enthusiasm for it. I continue to take a sharp breath every time the computer powers up.
In short, I love this photo. I think it may be the best photo I’ve ever taken. I may change my mind. I usually change my mind. But for now I’ll continue to put this one on top of the pile.
Politics? Did I say politics? Well, yes. I saw a report on the news tonight that was questioning the qualifications of Caroline Kennedy to be a Senator. Just had to say something about that. I frankly don’t know much about Caroline Kennedy other than the obvious stuff of who her father was and the many tragedies her family, and our nation, have experienced. But I am absolutely confident that she will be a fine Senator. Better than most. Why? Because she doesn’t need the job. The only reason she could have for seeking that Senate seat is because she wants to, and thinks she can, do some good for our country.
Give Caroline Kennedy the job. We could do (and have done) one hell of a lot worse.
Caught a Soul?
December 20th, 2008
I shot this photo of Phoenix Kelly today. I was playing around with some fabric and my 50mm f/1.4 lens used wide open to play with shallow depth of field. She just wrote to me to say this about this photo, “Love this. You caught me. On camera. That’s the first time that I recognize the girl in front of the camera..”
I like it too. So now you get to see it. Is there something of Phoenix’ soul in there? Who knows? Maybe Phoenix knows…
If you are reading this you know that the church ladies found my blog and reported it. The warning about “objectionable” material started showing up. I’m still thinking about how I want to respond to this. It’s annoying, but not all that big a deal. The number of visitors is down, but I’ve never been all that concerned about how many people come here. I figure I’m more interested in quality than quantity of readers. And I’m sure my friends…the readers I care about…are still going to be clicking through. I’ve never cared a bit about the wankers who may come here to see naked women. I don’t shoot for them and I don’t blog for them. But I also don’t think the warning will have any affect on them, other than to possibly draw a few more of them in.
So, what should I do? Ignore it and go ahead? Or maybe just move the blog to another place where I don’t have to worry about the church ladies. I guess I’m most annoyed at the attitudes that would lead anyone to say what I do with photos is objectionable. I object to that. That’s an attitude that truly is objectionable.
Oh well, life goes on. It’s not like this, or any other, blog is important. It’s just something I do. And I suppose I’ll keep doing it until I don’t want to anymore, and then I won’t. If I decide to move somewhere else I’ll give plenty of notice, of course, and leave a link here. But I won’t be doing anything for a while.
More Krappiness
December 13th, 2008
I’ve spent a good deal of time this past week looking through my old photos for things I’ve done with various kinds of “Krappy Kameras” to find things to send to the juried show in New York. I have way more than I can send, but I think this one is going to make the cut. That’s Rachel on the coast of Maine back in 2003. The camera was a Nikon D100 with a 100mm Sima single-element soft-focus lens. I’ve had that lens for many, many years. It might be considered a forerunner of the Lensbabies that are so popular (and so overpriced) these days. This lens is a simple tube inside a tube with a big single lens mounted in the middle. The aperture can be changed by placing pieces of plastic with different size openings on the front of the assembly. Focusing is done by sliding the tubes back and forth. It’s an f/2 lens, but I usually use the f/4 aperture insert to get a bit more sharpness. Take it down to f/8 and it actually gets pretty sharp, in an old-fashioned sort of way.
There’s much too much going on in my life right now for me to be spending much time updating this blog…but it’s all good stuff and I’m looking forward to a very nice Christmas this year.
I’ll be back here now and then to post updates.
Krappy Kameras
December 6th, 2008
This is the time of year when there seem to be a lot of juried shows looking for entries. So I’ve been busy getting entries ready. Several have already been sent off and several more are in various stages of preparation. I’ve gotten so that I’ll only enter these things if it is easy to do the entries on line and the entry fees are very reasonable. I think a lot of them are just fund raising affairs intended to get as much money as possible from the entry fees with few of the entries actually accepted for exhibit and little or no benefit even if your photos are accepted.
So I’ve gotten pretty particular. Some, like the Kinsey Institute’s annual show, are put on by institutions that I’m more than happy to support with my entry fee. Others are just fun. One that falls into that category is the Krappy Kamera show put together by the Soho Photo Gallery in NYC. The basic requirement is that the photos must have been taken with a “Krappy Kamera” such as a Holga or Diana F or anything else that has a really crappy lens, including pinhole cameras.
I’ve enjoyed playing with crappy lenses over the years, so I’m enjoying getting this entry ready. I am not a big fan of the Holga and Diana F, having been forced to work for a year with the Diana F back in photo school and hating every minute of it. I like the effects of old soft-focus lenses for some subject matter. I just don’t like the random bad things that tend to happen with those plastic cameras. So I’ve found a variety of other ways to get the soft effect.
I’ve had a single-element soft focus lens made for a Nikon mount for many years. Recently I bought an actual Holga lens attached to a Nikon mount. I also have a variety of store-bought and homemade pinholes that can be mounted on my Nikons. So I have a bunch of photos made with those crappy lenses and my digital cameras.
But, even more fun is the “camera system” I used for the photo of Nemesis in this post. I call it my “Speed Holga.” I duct taped a $3 magnifying glass to an empty lens board for my Speed Graphic and used the rear shutter and a Polaroid back to make this photo and a bunch of others that are in the running for the Krappy Kamera show.
Photography, at least for me, is about having fun. And doing things like this sure are fun. And maybe now and then they are art too.
Sorry posts have been so few and far between lately. I expect it to be like this for the next few weeks. I’m just simply very busy, mostly with things other than photography and the blogging. But I’ll be back here posting when I get time and I’ll hope to be back to doing that more frequently after the holidays.
Thanks
November 30th, 2008
Thanks for still coming here after I’ve let the blog go for nearly a full week without an update. I’ll blame it on the holiday. It’s been a busy one, but a very enjoyable one. Since my last post on Monday here’s what I’ve been doing: Tuesday I shopped for Thanksgiving food, including the difficult-to-obtain ingredients for my special ham loaf. Wednesday I cooked and had my whole immediate family over for dinner for the first time in years…and the first time ever for my new son-in-law and grandson. Thursday we were surprised by a tree service that showed up to take down a tree in our back yard on the property line. My neighbor wanted the tree removed, I agreed and he hired the company, not knowing just when they would come. But we didn’t really expect it to be on Thanksgiving Day. So I stayed home to supervise the tree people while my wife went to some friends for dinner. I joined her a couple hours later and had my second go at Thanksgiving gluttony. Friday we got up early and drove 3 hours to my brother-in-law’s to join their family for yet another Thanksgiving feast. Drove back home Saturday. So today I’m finally finding time to get back to the blog.
But I really haven’t had time to select and edit something new to post, so I cheated. That’s Athena in the foreground and Phoenix Kelley in the background in the photo above. Athena chose that photo from our shoot at a painter’s studio in the Oregon District in Dayton. Athena did the PhotoShopping on the photo and posted it on her Model Mayhem page. I really like the shot too, so I just swiped her edit off her site to post here today. Athena is a real master at PhotoShop. I hire her to work on my problem photos that need someone with real skill to correct something. She has a Model Mayhem page for her retouching work here. I can highly recommend her if you need any PhotoShop work done.
And, while we are talking about PhotoShop, let me say something about the photo in the last post. I did a little “burning” of the background in PhotoShop on that file. On the monitor I was using, which is calibrated to my printer output, that darkening of the background was invisible. I’ve since seen the photo on some other monitors and found it to be very obvious. I’ve noticed that on some other files that I’ve uploaded over the years. Monitors vary widely and as a result it’s impossible to know just how any photo is going to look to the many people who view it on a wide range of monitors. I’m a bit at a loss as to what to do about that. I could work on that file some more and make the work I’ve done invisible on a monitor that renders the photo lighter, but then the file would not print correctly on my printer. And it would look too dark on my screen and, I assume, on the screens of many other folks who have calibrated their monitors. So maybe I’ll just ask you to take my word for it that if what you see seems too light with some noticeable PhotoShopping, it doesn’t look that way on other monitors…and most importantly, it doesn’t look that way in a finished print.
Something Old and Something New
November 24th, 2008
That’s a new photo…but shot the old way…on film. I’m starting a new project inspired by the availability of a new way of working with film. Call it hybrid photography, if you will. I’m shooting medium format black and white film and having it processed at a lab that does very high quality scans at time of processing for a very reasonable price. About what you’d pay for regular prints. But the scans are really excellent. From my square negatives they come in at a little over 5,000 pixels square. Each file is about 74 megapixels when opened in photoshop. That makes them roughly the same size as the photos I shot at Lois Greenfield’s studio in NYC using her Leaf digital back. And all I had to do was drag my old medium format gear out of cabinet and buy a few rolls of film. A lot cheaper than a $30,000 digital back. Oh…and I did have to go buy new batteries for the strobe meter that I hadn’t used since I switched to digital back in 1999.
Oh…and the highlights don’t block up. And there’s no anti-aliasing filter to de-sharpen the photos. On the original scan you can count the hairs if you have enough time.
I learned about this new service at Ken Rockwell’s site. Ken has declared that “digital is dead” and film in this hybrid approach is the future. I think he’s exaggerating just a bit, but that’s his way. I’m very pleased with my first results and I’m working on refining how I’m going to approach this new series of nude portraits shot on film. I’m also going to try it with some 35mm film, both in black and white and with color negative film, just to see what those scans look like. And that will give me an excuse to pull my 60-year-old Leica out of the cabinet and shoot with it again. Wonder if the rangefinder is anywhere near accurate after all these years?
You’ll be seeing more things shot on film as I play with this. If you are interested in trying it yourself the lab is North Coast Photographic Services in the San Diego area. A direct link to info about this new service is here. I’m sure other labs will soon be offering similar services, if they aren’t already. But I can certainly vouch for NCPS as far as quality price and service go.
Who wudda thunk? Dave shooting film! Can the apocalypse be far away?
Dance Your Life Away
November 21st, 2008
More from the wonderful senior dance majors at the Ohio University School of Dance. The light for this piece was easier to cope with than the one in the previous post that was lit by flashlights and the choreography was very interesting. Couple that with really strong performances by the dancers and a few nice photos result.
Dance photography is fun. I really enjoyed taking these photos and I find I’m really enjoying looking through them and picking some to post here. I hope you are all enjoying them too.
