Post #५ - A 'wild and crazy' improvisation opens a new door :-)

From 1993 to 2002 I lived in a very nice studio apt. in what's called the 'Inner Richmond' of SF. It was just a 'hop,skip, & jump' to go to Ocean Beach (true to it's name - what's west of here?... Hawaii!) - and to the 'Cliff House' ( a San Francisco landmark), and whatever goes on there. And I went there often...very often!
On the floor below all the tourist attractions/restaurants was a place called the "Musee Mechanique", which displayed many old fashioned (mechanical) 'amusements', from the days before there was radio or television - fortune telling machines, music machines, old fashioned 'movies' (you had to look into an eyepiece, and insert a quarter), stuff like that.
There were open windows to the 'end of day' light, which falls on some of the displays to various extents, depending on time of year/angle of the sun - including the 'mariachi monkeys' at the top of the montage above. If you inserted a quarter, the monkeys would play for you, a couple of horn players and a drummer. Without even inserting the 25 cents they are very amusing - foppish hats & garish clothes.
I photographed them many times, didn't know what to do w/ the images, montage-wise.
I just let 'em 'percolate'.

I've been down to the southern california deserts a number of times, drifted past & through many places, including the Salton Sea. One trip down there, I turned west from the S.S., and headed up into the Anza Borrego Mountains, late in the day. I drove a crazily switch-backed road that had many turnouts.
And took a few really nice frames of the waning light across some incredibly harsh hillsides.

Whenever I am out in these places, the silence is awesome.
But somewhere in my head, I feel there is a 'music' in this 'awesome nothingness' - it would sound like...uh.... bells, whistles and drums, all played at the same time, but only barely in synch with each other.
So...the hills and the musical monkeys happened to catch my attention simultaneously at the end of a darkroom session. The light hitting both was the same, and I decided to make just one print of the two blended together. Just winging it, entirely.
I exposed just one sheet, with the hills, leaving a triangular space... and then burned in the monkeys to the triangular space left unexposed.

(A lot of montage prints up 'til this point had been rather complicated - I'd make a few exposures on the paper, but still have gaps and holes that needed filling in, and I spent a lot of time finding something that 'fit', to some degree, which gives many of these prints a rather surreal/ 'non-sequitor' quality.)

This print ended up being a turning point - for it's simplicity, and for the idea of focusing more on really smooth blending between *just two* images, which can be done much more easily and smoothly in a darkroom than with a computer.
This makes the choice of images, and their composition, the real focus.
Exactly where it should be...
In great counterpoint to much that is done digitally, where you can 'do anything', and get totally lost.
I hope I can stay focused on making something 'mysteriously simple'........
http://www.bobbennettphoto.net/Art2/mthmuseFP.html

8/26/07 - Digital darkroom

Back to darkroom...sort of - this is 'digital darkroom' - kind of an oxymoron, but that's what I hear people calling it when they work on their images in photoshop, and turn them into something else entirely.
When I first got into computers, alot of my photo-friends said "well, duuude!! now you are going to melt down your enlarger, aren't you? What the hell would you need it for, now that there's photoshop?".
On the contrary, it all makes me appreciate the special qualities of each media/technique. I now have an even better understanding of what's special about the traditional darkroom.
(Anyone tries to take my enlarger away?...you're in for a fight!)

When I do get into 'digital darkroom'?... a whole lot of other things kick in.
(For one thing, it's color, and all my montage darkroom is B&W ((the color comes later, if it's appropriate)) - Big, BIG change.)

I used to be an advertsing art director, way back when - 1976 thru '81 or '82 - I've always loved good typography, read 'U&lc' magazine.. and I always wanted to try out an airbrush. Never had the money or time to really get into the airbrush...
and forget about buying a Photo-typositor for my 'personal use'!
Thanks to Photoshop? I can now indulge my crazy youthful fantasies, and do both.
The basic background of the image on the right - 'sand dial' - is, of course, the sand, with one clump of dunegrass in the center adding it's shadow to many others, beyond the frame.
This dune grass can do some interesting things to the sand, given the right circumstances - when the wind blows a certain way, and the sand is smooth and even, the grass carves circular 'grooves', like the image in the center above.

Something digital makes possible is collecting images without any additional film or processing costs, once you've got the basics (camera, memory cards, computer&software). So I shoot all kinds of things I might not if I had to deal with film processing, etc.
If I don't like/it doesn't work...? nothing lost.

I've used these 'carved' things in the sand in a few photomontage prints (see one above on the left)... but hadn't yet played w/ the concept in color/digital.
As soon as I did?... sure enough, all those 'art director/type designer/airbrush-artist-wannabe' things kicked in.
The image itself didn't have but a small carved circular area...the shadows of the grass overwhelmed it...like a... sun dial!
That's what set me off on a conceptual tangent - this wasn't a sun dial, but a sand dial.

The gradient white tone that describes the circle was 'airbrush'......
The Roman numerals were of course the type tool, in white... then I duplicated the (white) layer, inverted it, so it became black, & hit that with a 'gaussian' blur. Pushed that a few pixels over & down.
As usual, I played around with the opacity of all these layers - none of them are at 100%.
Ended up with a clock ..that keeps time a different way.

To see the image larger, and to check out all the layers, go to:
www.bobbennettphoto.net/BeachBlog_SandDial/index.html
(I've done a screen shot that also shows the Photoshop layers palette.)

Next time round?....... traditional/film stuff, and darkroom...REAL darkroom.