Play me some of that ol' time mountain music...

It's another music player of some sort (at the bottom of the montage image) - the holes in the disc get translated into musical notes.
(At least that's what I think it is.)
It's a disc that you won't find it at Apple, Microsoft, Seagate, that's for sure.
It was also shot at the Musee Mechanique in S.F., at Cliff House, before it was moved.
(See the previous post for links to the M.M.)

It's dodged out to '0' by the middle of the image.
At the top, is a landscape shot at Joshua Tree Nat'l Park - just rocks and sky...
but the rocks have very strong vertical 'grooves' in them.
How they came to be this way, I have no idea - consult a geology expert, if you want a professional answer.
My own personal opinion is... that what we now see as desert?... has been shaped by water, lots and lots of water, & was once much greener... and a whole lot of weathering has gone on, for many hundreds of thousands of years.

The neg that tied it all together was of a root of beach grass that exposed by the elements, and was left to waver back and forth over the sand, and carve these 'grooves'...







This connects the grooves in the rocks, with the disc player at the bottom.
To my eye, anyway...
Since this landscape was the last exposure added, I tried 2 variations.

Larger images are at:

www.bobbennettphoto.net/BeachBlog_DkRm_07_08/MtnMusic.html

I still feel much the same as I did 20+ years ago, about creating these images, which I've written about in the statement on my website:

"It starts by YOU telling the picture what it will be -- in the end, THE PICTURE tells you what IT will be..."
(Robert Rauschenberg)

I'm obviously interested in things metaphysical - beyond that, it's up to the viewer to decide what's going on.
If I haven't figured them out yet, (and I haven't, not *really*), why should I presume to explain them to anyone else? Many of the pictures just seem to 'happen', because the individual negatives are 'looking' for each other.
I'm just a chaperone, and a really loose one at that......
(...But those were always the best kind of parties, right?)

#1 - I'm surprised that anything I wrote, said, or did that long ago still rings true for me.

#2 - This makes me a surrealist, so far as I can tell.

I'll save you the google search, here's some appropriate links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andre_Breton
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrealist_Manifesto
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_psychic_automatism

Time for one more post before the holidays hit, and then I'm taking some much deserved time away from
anything resembling the 'usual routine' - my plan at the moment is to go to ..."Vegas, Baby!"
But not for anything 'vegas' and glitzy - there's lot of interesting land and parks within an hour or two drive northeast...

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.