All Wet In Denver
October 21st, 2011
On the drive back home from out west I had a wonderful opportunity to hang out with a couple great photographers, thanks to Brooke. We made a small detour on the way back east for a stop in Denver where Brooke was scheduled to work with Mark Sink and Kristen Hatgi. So I spent a day hanging out at their home while they did photos of Brooke.
Both Mark and Kristen are very nice people and excellent photographers. But there is another element to their work that moves it into a whole different level. They both work with the wet plate collodion process. They really know this old process and they let me watch the entire process from coating the plates to the finishing of the unique, one of a kind, photos that result. It was a real treat to get to see all the details of how this process is done.
I was surprised at how relatively simple the wet plate process is. Of course, it was invented and practiced at a time when things we take for granted, like running water, were not all that common. And there are parts of it, like the coating of the plates, that Mark and Kristen make look easy, but only because of the skill they have achieved through years of practice. And I learned a few of the incidental quirks of this process. Like, obviously, the plates are wet…but it had never occurred to me that a result of that is that the plate holders, when loaded, will drip. And the sensitized collodion that drips out will create a permanent black stain where ever it drops. Not something you want on your carpet or hard wood floors. So the holders come out of the darkroom in a tray.
Here’s one of Mark’s wet plate photos of Brooke:
But, there’s more to it than just the process. This really is a fairly simple process that anyone could learn with a bit of effort and time. But it’s one thing to learn and practice an old photography method. It’s quite another to take that method and use it to make art. But that’s what Mark and Kristen are doing. Their photos made with this process are wonderful creations. There’s a sort of spiritual quality to the finished photos that is simply not matched by any other process that I’ve ever seen. Mark and Kristen use that power of this process to produce amazingly powerful photographs. The beauty of the finished plates cannot be reproduced by a scan on the web, but you can get a hint of it from these samples. If you ever have the chance to see Mark and Kristen’s work in person, you should take advantage of it…you won’t be disappointed.
Here’s one of Kristen’s wet plate photos of Brooke:
As much as I loved seeing both the process and the results, I’m also sure that wet plate photography is not something I’ll be doing. If you’ve followed my blog for any amount of time you know that I consider cameras and other photo equipment…and processes like film or digital or wet plate collodion…to be tools that can be chosen for the purpose at hand. Every photographer should chose the tools that are best suited to the work they are trying to do. And we should each chose the tools that fit our working style and that are the best fit for us.
Another by Mark:
I work with digital cameras. I adopted digital early because it was an obvious best fit for the kind of color work I was interested in doing. I’ve worked with pretty much every kind of camera that is out there and I know what works for me. And what works for me is definitely not a view camera. Let alone a system where each plate must be coated by hand right before it is put in the camera and exposed. I could not work that way. It would make me crazy and I could not get the results I’m after. But all that just increases my respect and admiration for Mark and Kristen who are true masters of the wet plate collodion process. It is clearly the right tool for their work and they are making wonderful art as a result.
And one more by Kristen:
Home Again
October 19th, 2011
I’m back home. No incidents with the truck or deer or anything like that on the drive back from LA. In fact, I’m so pleased with the overall performance of my 2002 truck, despite all the issues caused by hitting the deer, that I’ve decided to see if I can keep driving it for at least another five years. Maybe see how close I can get to half a million miles on it.
I’ve been real busy since I got back at the end of last week. There’s been family stuff and truck repair stuff. And just about the time I got back home I also got the notification that I had four photographs accepted for the Naked In Pittsburgh show. I had already written to the organizers of this show to complain about their schedule for the thing. They allowed about two months for people to send in entries, but then only a week and a half from the date of notification until the date that the prints were due at the gallery. That’s just not enough time to get prints ready. I normally order mattes and frames from an excellent place, Frame Destination. They have great prices and the quality is as good as any other place I’ve used. And their turnaround is very fast…but not fast enough to get to me in time for this show. So I got mattes cut locally for quite a bit more money than if I’d ordered them and I’m just using old frames I already had.
Today I made the prints with my new Epson 4900. I continue to have an interesting problem getting good results out of that printer. I started out doing it the “right” way. Using PhotoShop, letting PhotoShop manage colors. The prints were awful…not even close to what I was seeing on my calibrated monitor. I worked on the files to try to get the print to look the way I wanted it. I tried different things, like still using PhotoShop, but letting the printer manage colors. Finally I went to ACDSee and printed from it…which is not a color managed workflow. The prints were perfect. Exactly what I wanted. So, I just went ahead and made all the prints for the show using ACDSee. When I’m not under a deadline I’ll try to figure out what’s going on that is causing this problem…or maybe I’ll just print with ACDSee and not worry about it. Results are what matters, not how you get there.
OK…I know you are looking for some photos, and I’ll get to that soon. There’s a ton of good stuff from the trip, despite the efforts of that damn deer. But I just have not had the time and attention to apply to editing yet. Too many other things going on. But I’ll get to it soon.
Meanwhile, here are a few snapshots from the trip, just for kicks.
Here are Brooke on the left and Kat on the right with beautiful model and talented photographer Tanya Dakin in the middle. Tanya happened to be in Las Vegas while we were there and we were able to meet her for breakfast as we were heading out of town to LA.
Here are Brooke and Kat with friends Clay and Lucky at the opening of Gary Breckheimer and Renee Jacob’s wonderful show at the Skotia Gallery in Culver City.
Here’s the massive Gotham Police Department deployed on the corner of Wilshire where my daughter’s apartment is located. Yep, they were filming the new Batman movie right outside her building the whole time we were were in LA.
And one last snap…here’s my truck parked at the Wig Wam Motel in Holbrook, AZ, on the first night of the drive back from LA. A fun place to stay.
I promise I’ll get to the editing and posting of the more “serious” photos soon.
Collaboration
October 12th, 2011
I consider my models to be co-creators of the work we do together. I honestly don’t understand why my view on this is so much a minority point of view. I often say that the models do all the hard work and I just take photos of them while they do it.
I’m serious about this. I share copyright with my models. I give them all the photos we do together and full rights to do anything they want with them. They can sell them. They can pick photos I don’t like and photoshop them in ways I don’t like and I’ll never say a word. Because I believe they have just as much right to the photos as I do.
But usually what the models do with the photos turns out to be something that I like. Sometimes they do things completely different from what I would do, and produce something that I love. That’s the case here. Brooke found a photo from the red rock desert that she thought would look good as a sepia-toned black and white photo. It’s unlikely that I would have photoshopped this photo that way since color is, for me, an essential element of my work. But this is Brooke’s photo too and her decisions about it are just as valid as mine. And, I love what she did with this photo. I think it’s very successful. So I wanted to share it with you.
And, besides, I’m too tired to do my own editing right now. We are on the way home. This trip is about to end. Today we drove from Holbrook, AZ, to Denver, with a stop in Rio Rancho, NM, to have lunch with our friend, Ralph. It was a long day. Last night in Holbrook we stayed at the WigWam Motel. It’s a very interesting place and we were able to get some fun photos with the moon rising above the WigWams, but there was no wi-fi at the WigWam, so we were way behind on just catching up with reading e-mail and other things like facebook. So, now it’s almost time for sleep…I drove way too many miles today…and I just don’t feel up to doing editing.
Maybe I’ll get to some editing in the next day or two and be able to share more from the trip. Or it may have to wait until I get home and get some rest. We’ll see. This trip has been the most difficult and trying trip I’ve ever taken, despite the excellent company of the models who went through the trials with me. But it may take some time to recover from all that I’ve been through…and I’m pretty certain that I’ll never take on this extensive of a trip again. But, there are going to be a lot of excellent photos, so it’s always possible I’ll change my mind…but I doubt it.
I’ve Never Been Lost In The Wilderness…
October 6th, 2011
That’s Kat and Brooke at South Coyote Buttes…a place that is about as truly wilderness as anyplace left in this country. It’s every bit as beautiful as the famous Wave, which is in North Coyote Buttes. But the Wave is much more easy to get to, and so popular now that permits to visit it as almost impossible to get. The day we went to South Coyote Buttes there were 50 people at the lottery for the 10 permits available for the Wave. But we were able to just walk into the ranger station the day before and get our permits to visit the South area.
But, it is hard to get to. The 4WD road to the trailhead is a bit of a challenge with deep sand almost all the way…and all up hill. But we made it with no problems…didn’t get stuck at all. And I was prepared with recovery gear to get us unstuck if that had happened.
So we spent most of the day wandering around in the amazing rock formations of this area. There are no real trails, certainly none that are maintained. You just wander wherever you are inclined to go. There’s plenty to see. There was one group of people that arrived shortly after us with a guide, but they didn’t stay long. And toward the end of the day another guy showed up to hike around a bit. Other than that we had the place all to ourselves. And it’s a huge place.
When it came time to head back, as thunderheads were forming and we could see lightning striking off to the southwest, we started walking back to the trail head. I had taken a compass bearing when we headed out from the parking area and it was pretty simple. The trail head is due south from the area. So we walked south for a while on what appeared to be a long-abandoned road. We started down a steep hill, all the while thinking, “I don’t remember climbing this hill on the way in.” But we knew we were headed in the right direction and figured we would hit the road eventually and follow it back to the car. And, besides, I really didn’t want to climb back up that hill.
Well, after about a mile I had to admit that we were off track and the best solution was to retrace our steps and see where we had gone wrong. But that meant going up that damn hill. And, trust me, this hill was an ass-kicker. Plus we were at around 5,000 feet of elevation…no small matter for a flatlander like me. It was gruesome. I had to stop to get my breath every 10-20 feet, it seemed. I’m talking serious agony here.
But we made it up the hill. And, continuing along the old track we had followed, there, off to the right, was the car. We had walked right by it, maybe 30 yards to the side, and somehow not seen it.
This reminded me of one of my favorite quotes attributed to Daniel Boone. I don’t know if he actually said it or not, and don’t really care…it’s good enough that he should have said. According to the story someone asked him if he had ever been lost in the wilderness. He replied that he had never been lost. He had been bewildered once for three days, though.
So we were back in the rented RAV4 and started the drive back down the mountain on the road of deep sand as we watched the thunderstorms move in and rain drops fell on the windshield. All the time I kept picturing the sign that was way back, 30 miles away, at the start of the road. It said, “Road Impassable When Wet.” There’s a reason they call this area the “slickrock” area. Get that red rock wet and you can have a hard time even standing on it, it’s so slick. A car, even a jeep, will just slide off the road.
But, there’s another thing about thunderstorms out in that desert. The air is really, really dry. Often there will be a huge rainstorm, but most of the rain will evaporate again on the way down and never actually reach the ground. We were fortunate and didn’t end up having to spend the night in the car in the desert…the road never got wet enough to be a problem. After about an hour and a half of driving…to cover about 30 miles…we were back out on the main highway and our desert wilderness shoot was at an end.
The next day we headed down the road to Las Vegas, where we are now. Of course, issues with the truck continued with the muffler separating from the exhaust pipe out in the desert. Made for a loud drive on into the city, but we made it. Yesterday I found a good independent muffler shop and they did a quick, inexpensive weld job and all is ok with the exhaust system again. That did require me to cancel the shoot I had scheduled for dawn at a spot out by Lake Mead, though. So I’m pretty much done shooting on this trip. Tomorrow we head on to LA where I’ll visit my daughter and her fiance and meet a bunch of my LA friends. Then next week I turn the truck to the east and see how soon I can get back to Ohio.
Road Trip Travails
October 3rd, 2011
As my readers know, this trip has not been the smoothest. After the deer damage was repaired problems continued in the form of, shall we say, less than wonderful motel rooms. But the trade-off for all that was in the places we went. I have a ton of new photos to share, but I’m just way too tired from today’s hiking and climbing in slot canyons to write about it all now. So just enjoy these two photos of Kat (above) and Brooke (below)taken today in Buckskin Gultch.
I’ll get to posting more soon, but we are up before dawn tomorrow to take a long rough ride to South Coyote Buttes…
Why Am I Here?
September 27th, 2011
Now on our third day stranded in Alliance. Why would anyone ever come to Alliance, you might ask? Well, there’s only one reason…Carhenge.
I first visited Carhenge shortly after it was created in 1987. I was on a motorcycle trip with my best friend, Ken. We stopped and spent the night in a tent right at Carhenge and did photos throughout the night…and endured a rainstorm as well. Ken got the photos he was after, and if you’ve seen photos of Carhenge, they might well have been Ken’s. But I got a different photo in my head and have wanted to create it for all those years. That’s why we were on our way to Alliance when the deer decided to change our plans.
We are still stuck waiting for the truck to be repaired. It’s sounding like we may be here another night. But I rented a car so we could get around and this morning before dawn we drove outside town to Carhenge and I finally was able to make the photo that I had imagined all those years ago.
This is a quick and dirty edit on the laptop from the jpegs. When I get home I’ll be able to do a cleaner job on the big computer and working from the RAW files. But this one holds up well enough for the web. To get a better view you’ll need to click on it, and then click on it again when it comes up in the second window…some quirk in this blog software makes you do that…the second click will give you a view that fills your screen so you can see it better.
Thanks to Brooke and Kat for making this photo finally become a reality.
Oh Deer!
September 25th, 2011
I’m on my trip out west. Things have not been going all that well. I’ve been reminded of a couple old sayings that I often heard when I worked for the Air Force:
“No plan survives first contact with the enemy.”
and
“Flexibility is the key to air power.”
I started out Thursday by driving to Minneapolis to meet up with Brooke and Kat. Well, that was the plan, anyway. Everything was going along fine until the alternator in my truck failed in rural Wisconsin. But it worked out. Flexibility and luck were with me. I happened to pull off the interstate at an exit where there was an excellent mechanic just a half mile from the exit. He was about to close up for the day when I pulled in. He stayed late and located an alternator that could be delivered in the morning. I found a motel of sorts attached to the back of a gas station nearby and spent the night. I arranged for my friend Stephen in Minneapolis to pick up Kat at the airport the next morning. The next morning the biggest delay was just waiting for the new alternator to arrive. Soon it was installed and all was well with the truck. Here’s the truck parked in front of my mechanic/savior’s shop Craig’s Auto Repair Shop, aka the C.A.R. Shop. I’d tell you his full name and address, but there’s a little problem keeping me from being able to do that right at this moment:
I arrived in Minneapolis, had lunch with Kat and Stephen as we had planned, then went to dinner with Brooke and her boyfriend, Matt. The next morning we were all off on our trip. The first day’s drive was long and uneventful. It was Kat’s first trip out west, so the views of the plains were entertaining for her.
We spent the night in a small town in Nebraska. The plan was to get up before dawn and make a short drive to Carhenge to do photos there at sun rise. But a deer in the road had other ideas for our day. Yes, for the second time on one of my trips I hit a deer with my truck. The last time, on a trip to Glacier National Park, I was able to finish the trip without making any repairs, although there was quite a bit of work required after I got home. Not so this time. Since we were out in the middle of nowhere and the truck was running fine, or seemed to be, I decided to drive on to Alliance. But after a few miles the engine overheated. The deer had put a hole in the radiator. Not something we could avoid taking care of immediately, obviously. So, a call to AAA…great folks, great service…they found a towing place and repair shop in Alliance. About an hour later Wayne loaded the truck onto his car hauler and drove us to a motel in Alliance. That was this morning. He hopes to find a radiator and replace my busted one and have us on the road again tomorrow sometime. That’s why I can’t tell you the address of the Wisconsin car shop…that’s in the glovebox of the truck off at the repair shop.
Here’s what the truck looked like after this close encounter of the deer kind. It doesn’t look all that bad from a distance, but if you look close through the missing part of the grill you can see some of the damage to the radiator:
So we are just passing the time in Alliance…five miles from Carhenge, but no way to get there to take photos. We considered walking, but decided against it. Whenever the truck is fixed we’ll just stop by and do some photos on our way out of town. This delay may cause us to alter a few plans for the next couple days of the trip, but we should be back on schedule after that…unless something else happens. My new saying: “The key to a successful photo trip is flexibility.”
Meanwhile I saw this while walking around Alliance. I thought it made a moderatly interesting photo:
More Muscles
September 21st, 2011
Here are a couple more photos from my shoot with Artistic Physique and Fitness 101. These are a couple of amazing body builders who also happen to be very nice people and excellent models. And not the least bit shy, which is always an advantage when doing nudes.
This shoot was a lot of fun for all of us. AP and I had been talking about setting it up for some time and it finally worked out. All I had to do was set up the lights and turn the two of them loose to see what poses they could come up with.
I’m spending today packing. Tomorrow morning I head out for a long photo expedition with two of my all-time favorite models. Stay tuned for news and photos from along the way.
One more of AP and Fitness before I go:
Triangles
September 18th, 2011
Life’s pretty busy, as usual. I’m getting ready to leave on this year’s major photo trip. If all goes well you’ll see photos and updates along the way between now and the middle of October. Stand by for details.
But meanwhile, I’m way behind on posting the things I’ve been shooting. A lot of that has to do with getting ready for this trip. But I’m going to try to catch up over the next week or two before I start having things from the trip to post.
To start off, I’ll be posting a few from a great studio shoot with a couple fantastic models. I’ve worked quite a bit with Artistic Physique. She’s beautiful, talented and a world-class body builder on top of all that. She came to the studio a while back with a friend from the world of body builders, Fitness 101. The two of them did some great work together. Here’s the first sample. I’ll be posting a few more from this shoot.
As Light As Air
September 14th, 2011
That’s what you think must be the case when you see dancers like these in action. I took this photo in New York City several years ago. I was studying dance photography with Lois Greenfield at her studio there. She brought in some of the best dancers in the world for us to work with. But you can see that in this photo.
Lois has added this photo to her collection of student work on her website. She just e-mailed me to let me know, so I thought I’d share the news here. Lois does workshops at her studio from time to time, so if you’d like to photograph the best dancers in the world while learning from the best dance photographer in the world, this is how you can do it.
Thank you, Lois. And thanks to the amazing dancers: Dario Vaccaro, Miguel Quinones and Colleen T. Sullivan.
