Time for another sandwich

A landscape from Joshua tree, Barker Dam Lake 

(who'd think there would be a lake in a place a desolate and dry as Joshua Tree?):

...juxtaposed/sandwiched with two different frames of rolling stones, also Joshua Tree. 

They make for an interesting vision. Questions abound - how did the rolling stones get there?? What has rounded them, and rolled them to this place? Here's the two sandwich prints:

The little details are intriguing:

There are many such conundrums to be found at Joshua Tree NP.

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Perhaps the two rolling stones are not solid rock, but lenses, allowing a view to geologic history, the shaping of this place by nothing else but water, vast quantities of it, over many millions of years, more fingers and toes than you can count on.

This one really screamed 'hand-color me!' So I did.

I must admit that after i scanned this, i hit the 'hue/saturation' buttons rather hard :-)

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In the occasional 'whatever catches my eye file':

I find this to be very depressing:

http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Want-to-sell-a-24-million-painting-fast-10827174.php

“Most of my top clients are on Instagram,” said Gorvy, who joined in March 2015 and has 54,000 followers. His daily posts are a mix of art images, artist quotes, personal musings, lyrics from David Bowie or Leonard Cohen. “That’s where the future is. It’s now, it’s happening.”

When i went into art directing in 1976, you could call up a creative director at an agency, get a few minutes of his/her time = some human contact, Same w/ fine art photo gallery people. I always thought it was about 'human contact'. Is instagram 'human contact'??
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Obama names Utah, Nevada monuments despite GOP opposition

[Associated Press]

Brady Mccombs, Associated Press

Associated PressDecember 29, 2016

https://www.yahoo.com/news/obama-names-utah-nevada-monuments-221032843.html

FILE - This April 5, 2012 file photo shows rock formations in Gold Butte, located about 90 miles northeast of Las Vegas. President Barack Obama designated two national monuments Wednesday, Dec. 28, 2016, at sites in Utah and Nevada that have become key flashpoints over use of public land.

But Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye called it an exciting day for his tribe and people of all cultures.

"We have always looked to Bears Ears as a place of refuge," Begaye said. "The rocks, the winds, the land — they are living, breathing things that deserve timely and lasting protection."

Some westerners, the Clive-Bundy-type crowd, view their 'rights' ( to 'manage', mine, profit from the resources of the land) as superior to the larger 'rights' of those who would want it saved intact, or at least as intact as is possible at this point in time.

Let's back to a more basic concept - Who really 'owns' land?

Answer: No one. Not really.

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.

How about some inspiration?

That's the title of this month's image - 'Inspiration'.

It's one where i did a darkroom print, and then did some digital embellishment, even took a stab at coloring the thing. I've been calling these 'hybrids', darkroom followed by digital. The levels adjustments are the kind of thing i could easily do if i shot a 4x5 copy neg, and did some burning/dodging/contrast adjustments in the reprint. Which is something I did plenty of back in the days before digital.

From bottom to top: there's a hand holding a candle in darkness; an abstract thing, a shot of light coming thru the bottom of a textured bottle, or maybe it was a stack of filters held against the lense, i can't remember at this point...

.....and some campfire flames I have used in a number of contexts.

Here's the basic scan of 'Inspiration':

 

Here's  the hybrid, w/some levels adjustments, the burning in of some edges - 

pretty simple stuff.

7/17 - A big P.S. and a bit of a rant! I was reviewing this post while drafting the next one, and realized that the tweaks I had done in the full res file (3600 pxls tall) barely showed up in the 700 pxl tall image you can see at the link to my page below.
They sure don't show in the thumbnails above.
All this leads me to comment on what digital has done to image quality - it's taken a BIG nosedive. So much for 'web quality images/discussions on this blog about subtlety'.
It's a waste of time. iPhones and all these other devices have lenses that are made of plastic, no larger than your fingernail. They are crap. People seem thrilled that they can 'share' (which is a euphemism for 'bother you with') whatever they want to.
REAL camera lenses are mad of glass - by Leica, Nikon, Schneider, Fujinon, Pentax.
I shot architecture for 10 years w/ superb Schneider lenses w/ a 4x5 view camera, i still have a pentax 6x7 w/ a 55mm lense so sharp you could slice salami with it.
Now THAT'S image quality!

One last thing? - how many people reading this have seen an Ansel Adams print?
I'll bet the answer is a resounding.......(almost) none.
Your loss. I suggest you correct this oversight whenever possible.
or buy a book, a real book, of the work of the masters of the past.

[[OK, end of rant, return to blog]]

Now here's some digital coloring. It's always interesting to try, but i can do soooo much more by hand, with much more subtlety, in less time.

Oh, yeah, almost forgot - i sandwiched the hand w/ a very thin neg of wispy clouds, wanted to add a bit of mysterious texture to the darkness.

I guess this is my version of 'the light bulb going on' that is so often used to express this.

For larger images, go here:
http://www.bobbennettphoto.net/BeachBlog_2015/Inspiration/index.html
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The world has gone wacko IMHO, but the news this week had some bright spots. The Supreme court decided that gay marriage was OK, and the ACA was constitutional too.
I'm not gay, couldn't care less who sleeps with, or marries, who ...as long as it's consensual. And the ACA has been good for me! - a subsidy that reduces my insurance from 700-something to 77/mo. is very niiiice! And I'm don't feel guilty about it - in a few years i hit Medicare, and the feds pick up the whole tab!

In the 'whatever catches my eye' file this month:
RE: the ocean and the beach:
Very good books, and reviews of them, as always the NYT does it right!

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/16/science/review-the-last-beach-the-narrow-edge.html

http://www.grindtv.com/wildlife/new-species-of-yeti-crab-has-odd-living-arrangements/#lFHBtub3pIRHmyIk.97

Photography:
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/15/burk-uzzles-american-puzzle/?_r=0

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/25/kenji-kawano-40-years-with-the-navajo/

If you agree the world is a bit crazy?... read this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/29/opinion/david-brooks-the-small-happy-life.html

I'll be trying to continue to live the small happy life (I've been doing it for a while anyway) for another month.

As the terminator said so eloquently:

"Ah'll be back"

Probably more 'beach' - definitely more darkroom.

Hand-coloring binge, December 2013

Like i mentioned before/previous post...
Recently my Mac mini got very, very ill, and i was computer-less at home for 10 days.
For some this might be torture... But it was not hard for me to dial back the clock a few years to time spent at a marvelous apt. in SF, before i got involved w/ computer work ('93-'97), and found plenty to do. Going to Ocean Beach, staying past sunset, shooting film, processing it, taking it all into the darkroom for montage, playing tapes of 'Hearts of Space' radio shows, feeling the building sway in the wind ( i was on the 4th floor, wood frame building) and open east and west facing windows to a breeze that i could fly a kite in if i was so inclined.
I also spent time tending a cannabis garden that turned out excellent buds. :-)
In response to the 10 days of no computer, I pulled out a dozen or so prints from recent years, spent many, many hours working w/ watercolors, then adding oil color, i really honed my skills, it was excellent.

(If your computer croaks, surely you can find something else to do, can't you?

Life before all this stuff proceeded just fine, as best i remember.)

I had never tried using watercolors much before, but it is an excellent way to do small details that can't be done w/ a Q-tip. And i had never tried doing much w/ pearl/luster surface prints, they didn't seem to 'take' oil colors very well, at least not Marshall oil colors. Well, my Marshall set dried up a long time a go, and I don't like the ones they sell now - they seem to have dropped alot of the classic colors - I am used to the traditional stuff - sienna, raw sienna, umber, paynes grey, cerulean - they have added some other colors I just don't get, or want. So I bought a six tube set of very basic artist's oils.

I pushed myself much more w/ the watercolors first. Again, I have a basic set, 8 little bottles in all. One of the keys to adding watercolor is to wet the area you want to color first, w/ plain water. If you try and add color to a dry print, it will sink in, leave brush marks, and there's no "Command+undo" for that one. You need to soak it a bit first, just water w/ a Q-tip, or cotton ball.
The prints I pulled to work on were all 'duplicates/seconds', so if i fucked it up, oh well, c'est la vie, nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?
It worked out really well, two things i learned: #1 - can't add much color to a very dark areas (duh!) & #2 - Don't try to add much color to very light areas/hilites, it'll just deaden them. You need to keep some hi-lites, close to white.

Here's some befoe and afters, on the left, with just watercolors. On the right, the final w/ oil colors:

When i dove into 'part 2' - the oil coloring - i discovered that the Ilford 'pearl' managed to take it in better than i had thought it would. First of course, i hit the print with linseed oil, let it sink in for a few minutes, then wiped the excess off w/ kleenex. The oils i had seemed to sink in just fine.
So I did about a dozen more the same way, always adjusting, refining, tweaking techniques.

You've pretty much got to it all in one pass, one session - I have tried returning a few days later to a few things, and the fresh oil color dissolves what's already there, and you just a very hard to fix mess.

The scans needed some tweaking, especially the fiber based paper - i could see too much surface texture, mostly due to the fact that once i did some watercolors, the paper never dried flat, even after i put it under a heavy weight.
As long as i was tweaking them, i did a few retouching things, and extra color adjustments.

So here's the full batch, at a page on my website. Hope you enjoy :-)

http://www.bobbennettphoto.net/HndClr/index.html
(you can skip the 'notes' page, it's pretty much the same as this post.)

And here's a few good 'info' links

http://www.misterart.com/photography/hand-coloring-spotting/marshall-s-advanced-oil-set.html

http://www.misterart.com/photography/hand-coloring-spotting/

http://californiasilverwizard.blogspot.com/2009/06/hand-coloring-b-photo-prints-dying-art.html

http://californiasilverwizard.blogspot.com/2013/07/another-round-of-hand-coloring.html

I always quote the Terminator, 'Ahnold S.' - "I'll be back".