Contact sheets... and then some

This small but hopefully growing batch of images was inspired by a 16x20 print i have had on my wall for almost 25 yrs. It is an enlarged contact sheet, a thing of beauty made by an enlarger that no longer exists, at a lab that no longer exists. The scene is a sunset at Ocean Beach, SF, CA. It's handcolored, a progression from sunset... to sundown.

I have scanned numerous proof sheets, looking back at them, & the 'collection' of frames can coalesce into something larger than the sum of the individual frames.

Most rolls were taken (obviously) around the same place(s) - the frames have a similar feel, lighting, subject matter.

So to make a long story short, i started making 'creative contact sheets' - editing & rearranging the frames, sometimes coloring them.

It's been a great free-for-all.

And since i have a pile of contact sheets about knee high, there will probably be more to come :-)

If you like what you see here, and want to take in more:

http://www.bobbennettphoto.net

I've been self publishing my own books thanks to Blurb.

Previews of all at:

http://www.bobbennettphoto.net/BB_Books/index.html

'California Beach Trip':

On Amazon:

www.amazon.com/dp/1364579138

'Desert Trip'

On Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1367900190

'Seeking the Vibe'

On Blurb:

http://www.blurb.com/b/6834807-seeking-the-vibe

Encryption machine

The basic/most important neg was shot at the 'Musee Mechanique' in SF/Cliff house, 

which was situated below the classy restaurant level:

Yes, this is the montage, sand and sky:

Cliff House over the years.

Don't know where the idea for this one came from, after all i did it many years ago, in 2008.

The basic shot is of the guts of an old fashioned player piano, you wind it up somehow, the wheels start spinning, and the perforations in the paper roll in the middle strike the keys of the piano. The clouds and the sand, above and below? Which is being recorded?... or played back as the case may be? A tantalizing enigma, come to your own conclusions.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_piano

"A player piano (also known as pianola) is a self-playing piano, containing a pneumatic or electro-mechanical mechanism that operates the piano action via pre-programmed music recorded on perforated paper, or in rare instances, metallic rolls,............"

Another great item to be experienced here:

Here's more from the Musee Mechanique:

'Pick a card, any card'

Secrets

Onward upward

This one is sort of an opposing throw back to the first montage print i made work:

I have called it 'The edge of the world' for obvious reasons.

It's very simple - just 2 negs, dodged to blend well. Took me about 25+ sheets of paper to get it right.

'Onward upward' is the opposite - the stairs at Alcatraz lead into... the forest of Muir woods, huge redwoods, an escape indeed, if there ever was one. I have titled it 'Onwards, Upwards'.

After 30+ years, i hear an echo in here somewhere. It is most welcome, i am glad i see/hear.. a thread, a method to my madness.

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The 'whatever catches my eye' file is really fat this month.

Craig Childs, a great writer:

"I believe the earth will survive us. It has survived far worse than us. Its 3.5-billion-year life history is a gauntlet of apocalypses. In every ancient crater and dinosaur fossil bed, you see a story of global endings.

Whether we survive ourselves is more the question.

And what of most other living things? Will they survive us?

I'm not willing - or even able - to wait the 6 to 10 million years it would take to return to current levels of biodiversity. That's how long global mass extinctions have taken to recover in the past. Key indicators point to us being in such an extinction right now. So, you have to ask, what comes next?

The most likely scenario, or at least the most hoped for, is that the planet remains generally supportive, and climates are stable enough we get to keep our pretty cities and bucolic countryside."

((This bloggers comment? - oh, no - i think it will get much worse, and take much longer to get better than we can imagine. Joni mitchell sang "we are stardust we are golden..."

No, we are poisonous cruel and thoughtless, we will get our comeuppance, our due, sometime soon ))

http://www.houseofrain.com/bookdetail.cfm?id=1344621970977

"I sit still listening to the many heartbeats of the forest. Summer has, fall has turned, and the world of animals moves ahead."

http://www.houseofrain.com/rantsandwritings.cfm?mode=detail&id=1479222002750&group=writings

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Narwhals, Tusked Whales of the Arctic, See With Sound. Really Well.

Trilobites

By JOANNA KLEIN NOV. 9, 2016

Wondering how climate change and the prospect of an ice-free Arctic might affect narwhal behavior in the future, scientists tracked these whales over the ice in helicopters. Knowing that whales use echolocation — sending out clicks of sound that bounce off objects in the environment around them — they placed microphones underwater and listened.

They found that with clicks of sound, like a flashlight switching on and off, the narwhals scanned their underwater world to receive narrow snapshots and reconstructed them into a larger acoustic picture — one with more resolution than any other animal on the planet, with the possible exception of beluga whales.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/10/science/narwhals-echolocation.html

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You think Photoshop is some great software? You ain't seen nothin' yet, read this article, until you get to the part about how after all the information is loaded and the 'start' button is pushed, it takes several days to generate an image.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/12/science/shipwrecks-black-sea-archaeology.html

here's a depiction of the robot/drone that gathers:

and the product:

If you think humans are the only creatures that have smarts, feelings, empathy, perception beyond themselves, you are oh so wrong.

How a Donkey Became My Running Partner

We’d agreed to take this donkey because we figured he’d be fun and trouble-free. I didn’t know he’d set my life on an entirely new course.

Running With Sherman

By CHRISTOPHER McDOUGALL NOV. 17, 2016

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/17/well/move/how-a-donkey-became-my-running-partner.html

'Running With Sherman' is a weekly column exploring connections between humans and animals. 

Next week: Training a Donkey

Looks like this could be a very interesting story...

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/23/well/move/how-to-save-a-donkey-it-helps-to-have-a-goat.html

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A wild bottlenose dolphin, tangled in a fishing line, swims up to a diver in Hawaii and waits while the diver cuts the line free.

When a dolphin needed help off the coast of Hawaii, he was determined to let a scuba instructor know.

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/23/16663801-diver-who-saved-dolphin-he-swam-right-up-to-me?lite

But yet slaughter of dolphins continues in Taiji, Japan:

Yes, the water is red - blood red. Humans aren't the smartest animals by any means. 

We are however the meanest, greediest, we lack morality that animals have.

Have you read stories about dogs that will not leave their sick/dying friend's side?

Or dogs that find their way to their owners grave??

Hope i have given you a few things to ponder :-)

How 'bout a sandwich or two?

Not the kind you get at a deli, but a negative sandwich, two frames in the neg carrier, in pretty much perfect alignment. They are hard to come up with, to say the least.

Here are two such sandwiches, all negs done in Nevada some 8 years ago. 

Very rough ragged and forbidding mountains:

And two agave plants, very tough survivors, very tender and juicy leaves inside -  

their exterior, the thorns, is a deception.

I especially like the one with the close-up on the plant, above - it has lots of tension between near and far.

I thought these were good candidates for hand coloring, so i partied down with that.

( I do a blog about just hand coloring if you're interested:

https://handcoloring.wordpress.com )

In the 'whatever catches my eye' file this month:

http://monovisions.com/interview-with-ben-nixon/

Marvelous wet plate collodion images:

"Nixon prefers older technologies so that he can slow down and respond to the subject in front of him. While shooting in the field, Nixon’s car becomes the darkroom, because in the collodion process, glass-plate negatives have to be prepared, exposed, and developed on-site while the materials are moist. If the plates dry, they are no longer light sensitive. Although Nixon is a master technician, he sets aside academic ideas of what constitutes a perfect print, preferring to show his hand as an artist."

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Remember Polaroid? I sure do.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/21/arts/design/champion-of-a-polaroid-behemoth-yields-to-the-digital-world.html

It's called the Beach Blog, so we can talk 'sand' can't we?

"Sand is the essential ingredient that makes modern life possible. And we are starting to run out. Believe it or not, we use more of this natural resource than any other except water and air." 

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/23/opinion/the-worlds-disappearing-sand.html

I'll be back next month w/  a dreamer - no, not the kind Pres. Obama is talkin' about...

Oh, BTW... i have 2 books published on Amazon:

'California Beach Trip':

www.amazon.com/dp/1364579138

And 'Desert Trip'

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1367900190

Check them out, please. You just might like them enough to buy a copy.

Beach Bones

This one uses a technique i have only used once before, to my recollection.

The background (the rippling sand and distant horizon) was done simply, quickly, as a 14x18" print, just the bottom dodged out close to middle, and the top dodged out close to the middle - for me - simple stuff.

The 'bones' (human skeleton) was shot on a beach at Patrick's point SP in Nor. Cal.

I printed it out at the size i wanted it to be on the 14x18" print. The neg includes all the many footprints of the sculptures makers, it's a noisy cacophony i don't want to include. 

So I don't - i trim out the bones, very VERY carefully w/ an exacto blade. I spray-glue the back of that, and paste it onto the 'beach' background. Yes you have to be very very good w/ an exacto.

Then did the same as i have done w/ many 16x20 montage prints, 'one of a kind' - shot a 4x5 copy neg. 

The print i make from this is the finish/ final print. 

"Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, we all fall down"

I've got 2 Books for sale on amazon, if you like what you see here, check 'em out.

Desert trip:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1367900190

California beach trip:

On Amazon:

www.amazon.com/dp/1364579138

In the 'whatever catches my eye' file, this one definitely did, and it deserves EVERYone's attention:

'Monotasking Gets a Makeover'

By VERENA von PFETTENAPRIL 29, 2016 - NY Times 

"Stop what you’re doing.

Well, keep reading. Just stop everything else that you’re doing.

Mute your music. Turn off your television. Put down your sandwich and ignore that text message. While you’re at it, put your phone away entirely. (Unless you’re reading this on your phone. In which case, don’t. But the other rules still apply.)

Just read.

You are now monotasking."

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/fashion/monotasking-drop-everything-and-read-this-story.html

Yes... drop everything and read this article!!!

Let's get back to the darkroom!

But first, a little self promotion - my first book is up for sale on Amazon:

www.amazon.com/dp/1364579138

There is a 'see inside the book' link, so you can preview it.

Here's the cover:

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OK, enough self-promotion.

I read a recent article in 'High Country News':

https://www.hcn.org/articles/a-call-for-an-end-to-cairns-leave-the-stones-alone

I quote an excerpt:

"A stack of rocks left by someone who preceded us on the trail does nothing more than remind us that other people were there before us. It is an unnecessary marker of humanity, like leaving graffiti –– no different than finding a tissue bleached and decaying against the earth that a previous traveler didn't pack out, or a forgotten water bottle.  Pointless cairns are simply pointless reminders of the human ego."

It inspired the choice of this montage image, for this post:

It's rather mysterious, isn't it? It makes one wonder what is going on. You could ask a few questions, and perhaps not come up w/ any answers. Are the rocks somehow suspended in space, making the vibration in the water, 

...or is the vibration in the water supporting the rocks?

Any answer will do, and could well be correct.

"Viewers choice" here.

Technically, it's very simple, just two negs, the first, these stacked ocean and tide smoothed stones:

The second, the 'vibration' in the water. I actually created this by throwing a rock into a tide pool at the beach, and very quickly photographing it's effects, the circular ripples. Shot most of a roll to get a few that were good. I simply exposed each neg, dodged them out to blend w/ each other in the center. You've got to overlap the exposures to some degree so you won't get a lighter strip in the middle. My rule of thumb is: when in doubt, overlap more rather than less. I think you'll be glad you did :-)

To get back to the link from HCN at the beginning of the post?

Puh-leeze, dude! Lighten up, get some perspective. Humans have been altering the enviroment since prehistoric times. We won't stop now, in fact our effects are increasing daily. A few improvised sculptures are the least of our problems!

Yes, this is a very simple image, and yes, i have seen all the outrageous new imagery being done w/ newly released software, google stuff i think. And many of the images i see draw one question to my mind - how much of this is the original shot, and how much is digital? 

Can you make a straight/unaltered shot that is worth looking at?

That's the question photographers had to answer not too long ago, but i guess it's irrelevant now.

Perhaps i am a dinosaur?... but happily so.

Here's another cairn i photographed, i think somewhere in Joshua Tree NP.

Needless to say the cairn has offered someone a new direction - 

perhaps he is tipping his hat to his good fortune?

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In the 'whatever catches my eye' file this month:

The Impious Delights of Hieronymus Bosch

A new exhibition celebrating the artist's 500th anniversary oddly presents him as a religious moralist.

BY ELLEN HANDLER SPITZ

March 25, 2016

https://newrepublic.com/article/132024/impious-delights-hieronymus-bosch

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http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/hieronymus-boschs-five-hundredth-anniversary-homecoming?mbid=nl_160325_Daily%20remainder&CNDID=41014877&spMailingID=8712806&spUserID=MTI2MzM2MTI2NzkyS0&spJobID=882862303&spReportId=ODgyODYyMzAzS0

I've taking in art since i was growing up in Maine, my mom wanted to give us 'culture', took us to see Winslow Homer, Andrew Wyeth, etc. I lived in/around Wash DC for 20+ years, home to many great museums.

Bosch blew me away immediately... still does. No one else like him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hieronymus_Bosch

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This is a bit of a tangent, but since there's a by the wind sailor here, maybe it's not so off the wall.

For thousands of years, sailors in the Marshall Islands have navigated vast distances of open ocean without instruments. Can science explain their method before it’s lost forever?

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/magazine/the-secrets-of-the-wave-pilots.html

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A Too-Perfect Picture

On Photography

By TEJU COLE MARCH 30, 2016

You know a Steve McCurry picture when you see one. His portrait of an Afghan girl with vivid green eyes, printed on the cover of National Geographic in June 1985, is one of the iconic images of the 20th century. McCurry’s work is stark and direct, with strong colors, a clear emotional appeal and crisp composition. His most recent volume of photographs, “India,” is a compendium of the pictures he took in that country between 1978 and 2014, and it also gives us the essential McCurry. There are Hindu festivals, men in turbans, women in saris, red-robed monks, long mustaches, large beards, preternaturally soulful children and people in rudimentary canoes against dramatic landscapes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/03/magazine/a-too-perfect-picture.html?mabReward=A3&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&region=CColumn&module=Recommendation&src=rechp&WT.nav=RecEngine

I'll be back again next month, probably to the desert.

Happy 2016 to one and all!

Oops! Me bad! Me stupid!!

I made a big goof on the cover of my 'California Beach Trip" book - the image on the cover ran off the top of the page! Talk about stupid!

The blurberati were nice enough to pull it off amazon, and let me fix it.

But now in the previews i see, the text below the image isn't centered, even though in the edit preview, i did everything i could to center it. Is there a ghost in the machine? Hmmm - what do you think? 

Oh well, next time/next book i won't use the text boxes, that oughta solve that one.

REVISED LINKS:

http://www.blurb.com/books/6769617-california-beach-trip#basic

http://www.amazon.com/California-Beach-Trip-Bob-Bennett/dp/1364579138/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1450570112&sr=1-2&keywords=California+Beach+Trip

If you want to see all the pages before you buy:

http://bobbennettphoto.net/BT_BW_Bk/index.html

I've got 2 more books waiting in the wings, getting final touches, to be published early next year:

And if you're in the mood for some Xmas?

Princeton Harbor, just south of SF CA.

Outside a motel in Baker, CA.

Somewhere in the middle of nowhere, high country, So. Cal.

Along Rte 247, Lucerne Valley, Ca.

Have a great holiday season, whoever and where ever you are!!