A Surreal Wash. DC

This one is an *oldie but a goodie*, fer sure! - a very surreal take on cherry blossom time (March?April?) in Wash. DC.
Done in 1989 or 1990, i forget which. Well before any Photoshop.

It is definitely the wildest montage I have ever done, 27(+/-?) different exposures done over 2 days. Yes, 2 days. How do i keep the developer from going bad? Cover it w/ a very large piece of freezer wrap/plastic sheet, let it fall into contact w/ the liquid, that'll keep the air out. Infinitely re-usable, throw it in a sink and rinse. This was a collaboration - just about all the contributing photos were taken by another photog, Steve Uzzel, the piece was done as one page in a printing companies calendar, the assignment being? 'pull out ALL the stops, go wild, be mind-blowing!!'

Mission accomplished, me thinks. There's cherry blossoms on the trees, the Jefferson memorial (the domed thing in the middle), and Jefferson himself super-sized, numerous gargoyles in the trees, and several moons in the sky.
Yes, folks that's how strange Wash DC can be. And then some.
This was selenium toned, and then hand colored just a bit, the moons, the cherry blossoms, and especially the roaring lion, in the middle, to the right of center.
I think he is the only honest guy around - roaring his discontent to all else. Especially congress and the White House.
It's been so many years, i don't remember many of the production details, but i do know that many of the smaller elements ( gargoyles and moons) were masked with lith film so i could  expose them without any additional background tone. Same goes for the gargantuan Jefferson and the the lion.
After all these years, I like the lion the most.

Darkroom - "cinema au verso"

The title comes from the latin 'au verso' for 'on the other side', but i meant it in another way, as in 'in reverse'.
This one is like cinema in reverse - there's a large light (the sun) projected on a canvas (the earth), then framed and focused down to a small square of light in the lower left corner, it's that small square that made me take this frame.
it's the large empty/vacant spaces that begged for clarification, embellishment.
This one came to me as a concept - i wanted to subvert the flat empty spaces, somehow, some way.

At the top left, i burned in some Red Rock Canyon formations, i love they way they blend in, all the way to the lower left corner - Purr-fect!
For the light area of the wall?...  a stack of stones, a sculpture of sorts found on the beach.
I did three variations on this one - these stones were the last exposure.
I wasn't that keen on how the sky to the right of the stones worked out, i would have preffered to have no sky there, but it's in the neg. Maybe a case for 'hybrid' here? Or maybe some creative handcoloring/retouching?

Photoshop has cast this spell that we must tweak everything til it's perfect.
I don't fall for that very often, but in this case, i tweaked the sky at the right, and the lowest rock just a wee bit. I probably could have done this in the darkroom w/ a copy print, but this is a whole easier.
Wanna see this images a bit larger?
You got it!

http://www.bobbennettphoto.net/BeachBlog_2015/CinemaAuVerso/index.html

In the intermittent 'whatever catches my eye' file, here's a couple of interesting links:

When Computers Go Down, It’s Not Always a Hack
By Vikas Bajaj
July 8, 2015 3:18 pm

I quote from the article:

"If anything, recent technical failures are an important reminder that we are increasingly reliant on systems that can be quite unstable and insecure."
Yes, indeed.

http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/07/08/when-computers-go-down-its-not-always-a-hack/?_r=0

Definitely worth a click, and if you've never seen the book?
Correct that !!ASAP!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/05/magazine/robert-franks-america.html?_r=0