Back to the traditional darkroom...

The 'mechanical ("encryption") device' (it seems so quaint and ancient for these times) was shot at the 'Musee Mechanique' when it was still on a lower level, beneath the Cliff House restaurants, at Ocean Beach in S.F. in the mid '90's.

http://www.museemechanique.org/
http://www.museemecaniquesf.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mus%C3%A9e_M%C3%A9canique

The M.M. has since been moved to much 'nicer' space, but nothing gets the light that used to blast thru windows facing west/ to the sunset - it just ain't the same, for me.
And the ambience?... was great! - it was crowded, noisy and sometimes even a bit smelly.
I grew up on the east coast, & I've been to many of the coastal resort towns there, from Maine to Maryland & Virginia, and it feels more than a little bit familiar.
(Yes, the contact is grubby and scratched eight ways to sunday - guess I've sifted thru my contact sheets alot, way more than i can fix w/ any photoshop filter!)

It's a music player, player piano, of some sort, I think - the holes in the paper 'tape' get translated into musical notes.
If anyone would like to correct/inform me?... please feel free to do so.

Don't quite know why I saw it this way, but to me the rolls at the top and bottom were rather empty, & ripe for ...'something else'....
and there's the 'lucky #7' in the middle...! Whoa!!

'Earth and sky are always interconnected, and affect each other' - that's as best as I can describe my choice of sky for the top, and sand, for the bottom.
The sky was shot off the rooftop deck I enjoyed while living on 12th Ave., in SF.
The sand was shot at Pt. Reyes, somewhere.

(Sand is a favorite topic of mine - it is infinitely variable, & always interesting. It can be formed and reformed, again and again... and never looks the same.
Hey!..that could be a blog topic, just by itself.... watch out, it just might happen! :-) )

As usual, there's nothing technically tricky about this, it's matter of having the right negs to begin with, and then managing to realize they are 'good friends', and deserve to be together, in an image.
I can't emphasize this part of montage-making enough - you've GOT to have the right stuff to work with, before you even start to think about printing.

The first, and most important exposure is of course the first one, above.
I dodged back the top and bottom with two black strips in my home-made filter tray, below the enlarger lense, and dodged a bit extra by hand, but allowed some amount of exposure, on which i could 'overlay'/expose the sand and the sky.
If you haven't already done so, I suggest you check out my 'darkroom methods' pages for details on a simple 'below the enlarger lense filter and dodging device':

http://www.bobbennettphoto.net/DarkRm2/index.html



'Encryption device'
Why did I call it an 'encryption device'...?
Well, with all the current discussion of climate change, CO2 pollution, etc, etc, etc (ad infinitum, almost), do we really understand how Gaia (the earth) works?
I highly doubt it - we like to think we do, it makes us feel better... but alotta times, it's an illusion.)

Larger images, including alternate versions, are at:
www.bobbennettphoto.net/BeachBlog_DkRm_07_08/Encryption.html

Stay tuned for a lot more darkroom - I got some mountain music, a mysterious space, and an empty bucket waiting in the wings...... and that's not counting the door handle, schoolroom, and carousel tiger I worked on last weekend.

A few loose ends...

Winter has arrived in Northern California - November 1 & 2 we got some much needed rain,
and everyone has pulled the rainy weather wardrobe out of the back of the closet,
where it has been parked since last May.
Last Sat., 11/8/08, was another stormy wet day.
It gave me some time to gather a few loose ends & thoughts...

Why have my posts recently been heavy on darkroom, & light on digital?

In 25 words or less? - because the new camera I bought last Xmas has been a disappointment.
Four years ago, I got a really simple Canon Powershot A-40, image size 1200x1600 pixels. No camera raw, just jpeg's.
It was the first time I have been able to collect 'source material' in color, the way I have been able to w/ B&W since about 1974 or '75.
So for a few years, I just 'messed around' with it - I know color is very different from B&W, and I figured it was going to take me a while to figure out what I wanted to do, in color.
By the end of last year, I figured it was time to 'move up' - I don't have the funds for anything really top o' the line, but I thought that a Canon Powershot SX 100 capturing 2400 x3600 pixels would be a big improvement, it's 4 times as many pixels, right?
Is it a big improvement?
Wrong. No. Bummer.
The 2400x3600 pixels just don't have the sharpness, the saturation or clarity that the 1200x1600 pixel shots do.
This camera does all kinds of things I have NO interest in - movies? audio? panorama stitching?
Please! I want a camera that is JUST a camera, and is focused on, and designed to do that, well - to hell w/ all the rest of it.
Lense quality seems to be the last thing on manufacturer's agendas - when I shoot a copy of a montage print, w/ the aforementioned camera, just by laying it on the floor, and holding the camera 3 or 4 feet above it, the barrel distortion is outrageous - the straight edges of a 16x20" piece of paper bulging out, like my print ate at MacDonald's for month. And 'super-sized' every order. Kinds reminds me of the quality of low end zoom lenses, when they first arrived in the mid 70's.
I don't expect a 300$ camera to rival a Leica, or my Pentax 6x7, but hey, c'mon, it should be a bit better than this.

That's why I've been slacking a bit on the digital end of things.
So beware when buying a digital camera!
'Mega pixel' size isn't really a measurement of quality.
It all makes me love film!... my Pentax 6x7, and simple Yashica D, that much more.
I've always been inspired by things other than what that goes on in the 'photo' or 'art' world.

Three books you should read, IMHO, before you die:


Songlines - Bruce Chatwin
I have a copy of a paperback edition, all 294 pages of it.
The first 162 pages are an account of the authors travel in Australia.
From page 163 on is "'From the notebooks' - This is the best part, and truly 'the heart of the matter',
when it comes to his writing.

http://www.brucechatwin.co.uk/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Chatwin
http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=7782
http://archive.salon.com/travel/feature/2000/03/01/chatwin/index.html

Secrets from the Center of the World - Joy Harjo, & Stephen Strom
A very small book of text/poetry & photos that packs a big wallop, it's about Navajo country, the four corners area in the US southwest -
I have a hard time deciding whether I should put her or Bruce Chatwin first - Let's call it a draw, OK?
She is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma, and her Native American mindset
shines through in everything she writes.

(From 'Secrets from the Center of the World')
"Anything that matters is here.
Anything that will continue to matter in the next thousand years will continue to be here.
Approaching in the distance is the child you were some years ago.
See her laughing as she chases a white butterfly".

http://www.joyharjo.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy_Harjo
http://joyharjo.blogspot.com/

The Snow Leopard - Peter Mathiessen
...an account of his two month journey along with naturalist George Schaller in 1973 to Crystal Mountain, in the Dolpo region on the Tibetan Plateau in the Himalayas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Snow_Leopard_(book)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Matthiessen


OK, OK!.... make that 6 books:

Desert Solitaire - Edward Abbey

On Anarchism:
"Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Abbey
http://www.abbeyweb.net/
(The subtitle on this page reads:
"Enter at your own risk. Carry water. Avoid the noonday sun. Try to ignore the vultures. Pray frequently.")


Assembling California - John McPhee

(("No more eloquent nor dearly human writing on geology can be found than in the works of New Yorker writer John McPhee. In Annals of the Former World (including Basin and Range, In Suspect Terrain, and Rising from the Plains), his enchantment with the subject…offers an entirely new prospect of how our earth became what it is, as well as where it might be going. McPhee's completion of the Annals comes with his most compelling book on the subject, Assembling California, a delicious field manual on the creation of the Golden State going back a few hundred million years."
--Peter Stack, The San Francisco Chronicle))

In 1978 and 1979, John McPhee also began his wider series of related journeys, traversing North America at about the fortieth parallel, using roadcuts of Interstate 80 as windows into regional geologies, and incidentally profiling the lives of the geologists with whom he travelled. A continental tetralogy, gathering under the title Annals of the Former World, began with Basin and Range (1980), and continued with In Suspect Terrain (1982) and Rising from the Plains (1986), and is now completed by Assembling California.

http://www.johnmcphee.com/
http://www.johnmcphee.com/assembling.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McPhee


House of Rain - Craig Childs
(or anything he has written - I doubt you'll be disappointed - I wasn't.)

http://www.houseofrain.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/27/garden/27childs.html

You may need to register as a NYT regular?, but it doesn't cost a dime,
it's the best damn newspaper in the U.S..... and they won't spam you.

The next four entries/posts?
ALL 'darkroom'!!! I promise!