missing

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Hidden in the corner, I found this a couple of weeks ago when in town for an appointment. I didn't have a camera with me at the time, but it didn't look as if it was going anywhere, so there was no rush. Indeed, it was still there last week when I returned. This feels like the first color negative film that really works for me. Such that I'm excited about working with it some more. The light was quite diffuse (it rained within the next hour), and I've not pushed the limits of color verisimilitude with this composition. The ISO 400 grain adds quite nicely to the feel.

a dusty road

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This is about to get fenced in, meaning I'll be fenced out. So hopefully there will still be a chance to poke around a bit more, aftrer spending some time there again this past weekend. It has occurred to me that I might ask permission for access. But that's more preproduction planning than I'm usually willing to devote to a picture, and surely kills the momentary glee of finding an interesting location. The film's in the lab and John's having troubles with parts for the E6 machine, so no telling when we may see the exposures. This snap from an old pea shooter will have to suffice for the time being.

Yikes!

click 'er for bigger - one MORE snow?

Not really. This one has been sitting around the in/out box for several months, and I know there was a reason I liked the composition in the first place. Usually I can set up the Linhof in a matter of a couple of minutes, but for some reason it seemed to take upwards of almost ten minutes for this set up. Maybe that's why I'm posting it: after such an expenditure of time, I might as well do something with it.

But that's hardly the reason the image caught my eye. I've tried to figure this out before, mostly to no avail, and this time doesn't appear to be much different. It was something about the combination of colors and planes, and the imagined history of this well used back door to an abandoned Chinese restaraunt. Many workers coming and going, stepping outside for a smoke, illicit dealings after hours, all long gone and forgotten. Most or all of which can't be contained in a photograph. They function merely as evidence for storytellers and historians.

still stalkin'

click 'er for bigger - moon setting

Once again, no luck this month with the rising moon. Tuesday evening was my chance, and while it was a gorgeous sunset and dusk, the clouds obscured the rising. I made a couple of exposures, but not quite what I have imagined I'd like to see. Upon further consideration that perhaps this same location would be an interesting one for a night time photo, I was prepared (in concept) to make an expedition during the middle of the night. But after driving past earlier in the evening, I could see the intended location is directly adjacent to a sodium vapor street light. The light pollution would be considerable, and anyway, it dipped into the low 30's last night. Not sure I am prepared to sit around for an hour during one exposure freezing my bipee off. Maybe this morning?

For some other great construction crane pictures, check these from Mauro in Italy.

walkin'

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too many gun totin' liberals

These good buddies need to get together.

everywhere at once

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Not far from here.

wandering in the past

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later that same spring

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It's a weed thing, ya know?

what I saw (pt 2)

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It seems we've seen the inside of quite a few box rooms in the past six weeks, affording the opportunity to see sights various and far afield from the home standard.

some places I've been

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The only association between these two is that they're both b&w. No connection is implied or to be inferred. Make your own conclusions.

early spring 2010

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One month ago today: an abandoned brick works. I'm headed back... soon.

a modest discovery

There's no way around it: the first has definitely influenced the second, seeing as it came about 10 years earlier. Not surprising that the Coens know about contemporary Art photography.

JEFF WALL "An Eviction" 1988 click 'er for bigger

JOEL & ETHAN COEN "The Big Lebowski" 1998 click 'er for bigger

Found while absently running a test DVD to check that software had been reinstalled on an older laptop. It's a good example of what $$$millions can do for a photograph. I'm sure even Wall can't compete with the Coens' budgets.

all over the place

It may not be obvious while it's happening, but after the fact we can always make some justification for our behavior. In this case it's merely what cinematic experiences have been consummed of late. That is, maybe there's more of a connection than random happenstance, or the quioxotic passion of the moment.

Upon Joe Reifer's advice, over the course of a couple of sittings I've watched Errol Morris' Pet Cemetary, his first film for which he and DP Ned Burgess generated some rather striking compositions.

Also not to be missed as a stream from Netflix is Richard Linklater's first film, Slacker, a 24 hour tour through the back streets of Austin, Texas, surely a film that is a dérive if ever there was one. Only Luis Bunuel's Le Fantome de la Liberte has a similar non structured flow. Linklater's collection of misfits and polemecists don't necessarily engage anything but the mind, but they do entertain.

"we've been on the moon since the 50's"

"you should stop traumatizing women"

"I can't watch it on slo mo"

On disc came an "imaginative biography" of Diane Arbus, Fur, from the period when she left her successful photographer husband and began to photograph her own subjects. The film isn't much about her photography, as few American films ever have anything whatsoever to do with the thing that occupies most of our waking hours: work. Not exactly a Hollywood film, since it was filmed in studios in Jersey City, N.J., but since it's got Nicole Kidman playing Arbus, and Robert Downey Jr. as her new friend upstairs, it's not far from that dominant aesthetic. The compositions - by DP Bill Pope (he did all the Matrix films), and production designer Amy Danger - are gorgeous, as one would expect from a big budget production. It's full of ideas obvious and not so obvious, and probably deserves better attention than it received.

(Sorry, no screen shots.)

Also streamed from Netflix was Le fils, by the Belgian brothers Luc and Jeanne-Pierre Dardenne. Interestingly enough, their production company is called Dérive (see above) Films. The brothers Dardenne are much awarded flim makers who work in the area of Belgium where they grew up, having gone on to their minimalist ficitional films that feel much like a documentary. The characters barely speak, but the camera follows them constantly in its long take examinations of their lives of labor and work. The technique is as much a contributor to the perception of the film as the writing and acting, with elements of the Dogme 95 movement exerting their influence. Image quality in the Netflix stream is not particularly high, the original apparently being Super 16mm. It is the fluidity and intensity of the framing that reveals the authenticity of the material.

What's the connection amongst these varied viewings? Mostly, I think it's my infinite curiosity about the methodology that film makers use to present the lives of others in a fictional or documentarian manner.

a measure of success

last month's attempt - click 'er for bigger

After only three monthly attempts to catch a particular planetary occurance, it appears as if last night's foray into the clouds and rain was successful. This was a good example of being doubtful about what the weather is going to do half an hour before the time you want to take a photograph, but going out anyway. It was starting to rain when I left the house, although the sun was shining over the mountains to the west. It rained a bit more aggressively as I set up a new composition pointed in the general direction of where I thought the moon would rise, and the rain continued hard enough that I needed to break out the umbrella, for which I dearly needed a third hand, while also trying to change lenses and take a light reading.

Ah yes, the digital device would have been soooo much simpler. But who said easy was better? In most other forms of work that I've performed, rarely has the easy solution to a problem been the best one. Why should photography be any different?

The first exposure was captured, in the rain, with the landing lights flashing.

The horizon to the west clouded over as the sun went down, but to the east it seemed to clear somewhat. The rained ceased and I waited. After half an hour or so, sure enough the moon rose more or less in the location I had expected. I gave it another fifteen minutes and decided to move the camera across the field for a different composition.

Indeed, the lesson reinforced last night was not to let the weather discourage you from heading out for photographic purposes. Sometimes at the last minute things change for the "better," whatever the desired conditions might be.

The photo is coming...soon.

Update on Friday, April 23, 2010 at 03:31PM by KMW

Yes, the photo was posted last week, and trashed a few days later. Not a very good image, with a vast discrepancy between how it looks on different screens. The desktop PC where most photo work is performed is fairly "accurate" for gamma and output. (Although I notice that several recent images seem awfully dark.) When viewed on the MacBook Pro, with it's adjustable screen brightness, the moon was barely visible against a rather bright sky. Oh well, perhaps I'll keep trying, but I guess you really need a telescope to get a good image of the moon.

it only goes so far

"Camping World" - click 'er for bigger
Some time back, it seemed as if Mike Chisholm was chiding me for "stalking" my photographs. Maybe I'm taking it personally, or maybe I'm not so very unusual in seeing compositions and planning in some detail how to capture a view imagined for some time in the minds eye. This view is a good case in point: I noticed this spot  probably a year ago, but it wasn't until my recent return from mid continent that I had the time and inclination to stop and set up the camera. The location is at least two hours driving time from home and not really on the way to many places we head towards very frequently. This may not be the ideal time of day to have been here, but that's when I was passing by. Looks like we may be headed that direction again next week, so perhaps I can impose upon the fam to let me take some time to try again.

which way to go?

for my father-in-law; brother-in-law; nephew

Video or no video? In many respects, it's a bunch of horse shit. Why bother record hours of material that is either a lot of blathering, or in many instances can be shown with a series of single images?

After many hours of looking at video camera specs - perfectly good time wasted, never to be recovered - it's obvious that this capability does not come cheaply. Again and again I have to remind myself that mostly I prefer to work alone, or at least have gotten used to such methodology as a still photographer. What can I do alone as a videographer?

And yet... My recent travels - 2300 miles to the center of the country and back in the new, completely safe Prius - with JVC HD video cam in tow - have revealed some of the unattainable qualities of still photography. Movement within the image is the obvious additional factor. Even within a mostly static image, the merest whisper of a breeze animates the world in a manner unlike anything still photography can achieve. It's an incredibly seductive capability which inevitably is harnessed for the creation or depiction of the real world.* Nearly nothing mainstream in the cinema or television aspires to be anything but profoundly realistic. "It isn't realistic" being our primary gauge for the value of programming.

Sound, the second part of motion capture, is the much maligned second cousin to images. During production it's a nuisance and a profound complication. But it's reality enhancing abilities - something still photography isn't necessarily in search of - are generally considered to be worth the trouble. With enough manipulation sound too becomes as abstract - and perhaps even more provocative - as images.

The confusion is palpable. Even though I went all those miles across country and back, carrying the standard 4 x 5 kit as well as the rented video cam, it wasn't until I was once again within two hours of home that I was willing to stop and get out this seemly outmoded device: a still camera. Perhaps it was the newness of the video device which seemed to make still photography superfluous. Amongst the thousands of images that provided themselves to my sliding eyes, it was only one, that has been mentally manipulated previously, that motivated me to stop. This is the problem with travel: it's always easier to keep going, stay in the rolling cocoon, than to stop and set up a recording device.

The dilemmas of audience, funding, storytelling, technology, convention and more still swirl. All I know is that I've got several hours of HD video to edit, a prospect that appears challenging and even fun.

*The cynic in me can't help but recognize that the ultimate goal to which motion picture capture aspires is Reality TeeVee, which has become ubiquitous and is ever expanding. It manages, somehow, to combine the dual impulses of photography: to document the real world, and create a spectacle of it. David Foster Wallace has written tellingly, especially in Infinite Jest, of the dominance of entertainment programming in our lives. 

limited success

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Another attempt was made last week to catch the moon rising over this landscape. All set up and ready to go at least half an hour early.  As the sun set lower, and it approached the time when the moon should have been coming up - about 5:15 local time - the clouds seemed to get denser, even though they were not really moving. Six o'clock came and went, the sun set, the surrounding landscape got darker and darker. The moon never came up. Damn. I knew it was out there, somewhere, but where? By 6:30 I decided to bag it and abandon any hope of seeing a rising moon. Once I got home and looked out again about 7:30 or 8, I could see the mostly full moon shining through the clouds.

Perhaps later this month I'll have better luck with the weather: March 29 @ 6:30 pm local time I'll be out there again with my Linhof attached to the tripod. Anybody wants to stop by and say hello, by all means do so.

now that it's receeding...

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More old news, but continuing in the trend of showing what the camera saw, here it is. Claire's is probably better.

getting pushed around

Some detritus from the last snow storm.