Darkroom Thanksgiving

Can't stop blowing my own horn about this one:
Preview my book!
http://www.blurb.com/books/5470637-a-walk-on-the-california-coast

Or take a look at the Black and white darkroom montage images done 16 yrs ago that are the foundation for the booK:

www.californiabeachtrip.com
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http://www.blurb.com/b/5470637-a-walk-on-the-california-coast


You've no doubt heard of or seen 'A Charlie Brown Christmas'? (watched it on TV, yes? laughed a bit? yes, i did too.)

Well how 'bout a 'Darkroom Thanksgiving'?!
(California style, i snack on Tortilla chips and hot salsa while working.)

I have untraditional holidays. The only family I have is back east, a stepmother and a sister. A few phone calls or emails, and i'm done w/ the holiday routines.
I got a daughter outside Atlanta - late twenties, a lawyer - but since her mother and I were divorced when she was 5 y.o., We exchange emails around Xmas, and that's about it.
So my holidays - 4 days at Thanksgiving and a week or so between Xmas and New year's when the place i work for closes - are 'darkroom'. Or whatever else.
I have the time to stretch out, relax, really get into it, for days, and find a groove. Though I must say, no matter how long it's been ( last time I printed was July 4 weekend) I find the dormant circuits in my brain fire up real fast. Real fast!
So here's the take - a twenty five sheet pack of 11x14" paper, 3 final prints of all 4 images, got a couple of sheets left.
But before that, I should mention a few things:

#1 - I tried a new paper - RC VC matte surface made by Foma in Czechoslovakia - freestylephoto.biz has mucho  film, paper, all the analog stuff. My 'usual' has been Ilford, matte surface fiber (so i can hand color) but they don't make it in RC anymore, and RC is alot easier to dry in a small/studio apt. I like the matte surface, for handcoloring, but this Foma is not the same as Ilford, doesn't seem like it's as 'matte' (that would take oil colors well) as Ilford, but I saved a few exposure time test strips to try it out. If I managed to hand color a big bunch of pearl surface prints a year ago:

http://californiasilverwizard.blogspot.com/2014/01/hand-coloring-binge-december-2013.html
I think things will be OK, or at least i will work out the subtleties.

#2 - I take really good care of my negs - they are all in a tight (old fashioned hard shell) suitcase that lets in NO dust. I give any neg a quick clean off w/ an old anti static cloth, that's it.
You know how many dust spots i had to spot on all these prints? Just one, on one print.

#3 - whatever enlarger you buy, put a 'cold light head' on it.
Don't put up w/ condenser enlargers, they focus the light, and show all the dust.
The cold light is a *glowing* light source, it minimizes any dust or scratches.

Go to google, slam this in to the search terms:

'zone VI cold light head'

That's 'zone 6' - roman numerals are 'V'(=5) + 1 -  which equals 6.

You'll be glad you did. I sure as hell am. I bought my enlarger almost 30 years ago. It's the second best thing I ever bought. The first was my first divorce.
(the second one, the wife paid for.)

So here's the prints, in small size, larger sizes later, in future posts):

Have great! holidays, I'll be back next year, plenty to talk about.

How 'bout some mo' Digital?

Gotta keep blowing my own horn for a while about my book.
Here's a preview:
http://www.blurb.com/books/5470637-a-walk-on-the-california-coast 
Or take a look at the B&W montage images done 16 yrs ago that are the foundation for the booK: 
www.californiabeachtrip.com

Time for some more digital. I am still having fun with symmetry, let's look at two of those. But I also have an occasional montage that's not symmetrical, we'll check that out too.

First the symmetry.

I took a walk along a road that follows a bay in San Rafael into a neighborhood I had not visited before, it had a completely different feel from the downtown area I usually spend my time. There were lots of very nice houses on the waterfront, with some colorful exotic plants next to the sidewalk, and many marine/boating businesses. Climbing up the hills are various funky places, to my eastern sensibilities, very amusing, lots of character. It's been 22 years since i moved here, i am still getting used to it, and enjoying the surprises of 'west coast' style.

I'm not usually one for flowers, but I do really like succulents, palms, other plants that I never saw on the east coast, where i spent my first 40 years.

So here's how one image came about, I started w/ a simple shot of a flower:

I cropped it with the idea that the leaf at top left would be at the center...

... and duplicated that 3 times to come up with this 'kaleidiscope' image. 

It could use another layer of something... i chose a succulent, but used a cropped version to fill 2 quadrants of the image, flopped that to cover the other two. Set that layer at less than 100% transparency...  Then added a sunburst in the center. 

I called it 'done'.

Second one was a bit more complicated, but it's more of the same thing.

I suggest you go to the page at my website at the bottom of the post to get all the down and dirty details. I like to keep these posts a bit lean so that anyone can read easily no matter how slow their web connection is, and if you want to explore further, you can, but it's optional, I don't want to clog your browser.

Last but not least? China Beach Pier.

Funny how intuition and that 'sixth sense' can work. I visited a place called China Camp, east of San Rafael proper, juts out into the bay. It's a state park that has been fitfully maintained, the camp the Chinese made is poorly kept up. But being Chinese? it survives in spite of all..... I took a few frames.

One of the pier from inside a building, the other of sunlit hi-lites on the water through openings in the building wall. Yes, a star-cross filter got into the act on that one, i just held it in front of the lense.  I sandwiched just two frames, on a whim. They *flew*. I like that. I think perhaps what this montage says is.. there is 'light at the end of the tunnel'. Find it, it's there.

As always, larger images at a page on my website:

www.bobbennettphoto.net/BeachBlog_2014/WheresTheDigital/3.html

The 'whatever catches my eye' file has been lean lately, but this one is worth it:

Duane Michals

(My browser had trouble w/ both the pages below - web designers are getting too full of themselves, too fancy, and the code they write sometimes goes awry. i hope you can get to the meat of this w/ out too much BS. As a copywriter i used to work with just outside Wash. DC would say about his parties in Baltimore - 'it's worth the schlep'. Some things are. Yup.)

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/30/duane-michals-looking-back-moving-forward/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/30/duane-michals-looking-back-moving-forward/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=1&#slideshow/100000003204912/100000003204968

It's the sequential images that 'zoom out' so to speak that struck me - #9-17

this one is pretty good too, a dedicated darkroom dude:

http://laurentgirard.blogspot.com/

I'll be back in a month w/ some darkroom, unless i am dead.