Saturday, October 2, 2010

View from a desert shadow

First from the 'whatever catches my eye file':
A whole lot, this time round.
Still playing with toy cameras

Posted By: Bryan Chan
Posted On: 11:05 a.m. | September 23, 2010

http://framework.latimes.com/2010/09/23/still-playing-with-toy-cameras/#/0

If this catches your attention, a place to shop these cameras is:

http://www.freestylephoto.biz/

'Lee Friedlander - America by Car'

If you don't know of Friedlander's work, it's about time you did.
http://www.whitney.org/
http://www.whitney.org/Exhibitions/LeeFriedlander
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/photobooth/2010/09/lee-friedlander-american-icon.html

While we're on the topic of photographic road trips, this one is very nicely done:
http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/15/in-pictures-the-great-american-road-trip/

http://jenniferokeeffe.com/

Now Showing | The Graceful Dead
By Andrew Belonsky
September 9, 2010, 6:35 pm
http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/09/now-showing-the-graceful-dead/


“People dealt with death differently in the 19th century,” says Eva Ulz, the curator of “Memento Mori: The Birth and Resurrection of Postmortem Photography” at the Merchants House Museum. “People looked forward to a reunion in heaven. Creating portraits was considered a precursor to that heavenly reunion. They shouldn’t be thought of as creepy.”

On to some 'darkroom'!!!


The second print from my most recent darkroom session was this one - 'View from a shadow'.
I'm not happy with the title, but haven't been able to come up with anything better...yet.
Got any suggestions?
The key neg. ( the view from a shadow, under a huge rock, looking out over the desert) was made in Joshua Tree. What a great place, I never get tired of it. Someday maybe I'll bump into the ghost of John Keys (one of the first guys to try and stake a claim here), or Gram Parsons.
(If you don't know who Gram Parsons was, google the name. You've probably been listening to his musical influence for many, many years.
Here's a stunning, chilling track, especially considering Gram's unfortunate demise:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reGtZnzDfek&feature=related)

If you walk out to the 'Wall St. Mill'?..

..you will definitely feel like a ghost could appear at any time!
Or maybe a mountain lion. I'd much rather see a ghost!
If you'd like to see the Wall Street Mill images larger, and more of Joshua Tree:

www.californialandscapephoto.com/2009/TN_Page_JT.html

The starting point for this print? - I (re)discovered a 'sketch' I had made quite some time ago.

When I searched my contact sheets, I couldn't find the interior shot at the right. No way, no how. Best conclusion I could come to was that it was definitely something I swiped from elsewhere to do this sketch, as some sort of placeholder, 'remember this thought'.
When I sifted thru my contacts sheets, this one got the thumbs up:

It's is a shot of the captain's dining room on the 'Balclutha' ship harbored at the Hyde St. Pier/Maritime Museum in SF. Perhaps it came bubbling to the surface, so to speak, 'cause I made the trip into SF recently, to take this in again, after many years. A very interesting place.
If you are wondering something like 'this is a bit underexposed, isn't it? there's very little shadow detail!'... well, yes, you're right, and it IS intentional. All I wanted was the sky light, and if the shadow detail 'dies', fine.
I shoot for hi-lites, and let shadows fade into clear film base for a good reason - it makes it a lot easier to blend into another image if there is little shadow detail - there won't be conflicting things going on in the shadows.

Lots of interesting things happen in shadows (or darkness!), don't they?
(I don't care, nor should anyone else, what you do in the dark(ness) - hopefully that is protected by the constitution: "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness', whatever version of it you make up!)

I saw the bottom rt. corner as being a vortex of sorts, and worked with that. So I sandwiched the neg of the dining room skylight... w/ a sky.
Since this was the second print of the day, and the first one worked out so well, I felt obliged to... 'just fucking wing it'. Glad I did. So I did a couple of prints like the one above
..and for the third one? I added 'something else'....
As usual, click on the link to see much larger images, a bit more talk, and the visual conclusion - the print with 'something else'.
http://www.bobbennettphoto.net/BeachBlog_2010/FromADesertShadow/index.html
Need a musical interlude?
Check out this guitar playing,Totally awesome:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2BOApUvFpw&feature=related
Next entry?.... Hey! some marin headlands fog, shot last weekend!