achieving new heights

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Foregoing the expense of renting one of these, I opted to make a phone call to the building owner across the street, in order to gain access to his roof. It only took about two years to make the call. But the assistance I received was substantial. This allowed me to cross one more county off my list of 93 for the court house project, which leaves me with six unvisited counties, and another three with multiple buildings that haven't all been recorded. I'm going to cross them all off in 2010 - then start reshooting those with technical problems. And maybe rent that towable lift once or twice to see the tops of buildings like Bath, Highland, and Culpeper counties.

down in a hole

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Part of our "holiday" travels.

one more - why not?

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evolution

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The changing landscape - from one man made feature to another. How long before it changes again?

blue

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Bigger would be better, but alas I would have to take you by the hand and lead you to this place.

genteel decay

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From Friday's two hour wait while getting vehicle serviced - at least it doesn't feel like a total loss of time.

more aggressive grading

Without really remembering it until moments ago when I found this photo while looking for something else, I realize there has been some allusion to this "aggressive grading" technique so visible in the development community around here prior to these most recent entries. It's had me in some awe for a while, as can be seen here. There are other examples around town, but it's a challenge to show something so massive, that takes place over a period of months, in a 2 x 3" photograph.

Another image from my foray into the fog last weekend , which appeared in the previous two entries, has been placed in the Exploring the Wilderness gallery.

aggressive grading 102

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 Somewhere in the vicinity of this and this. But it's obviously all been wiped "clean."

aggressive grading 101

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Another example of the site work that appears to be the norm around here these days: flatten it out and then try to sell the land. After most of a week of rain, it was a mucky mess out there. Location undisclosed, even though I was outside the secure area. But once the fog lifted, I felt rather exposed, and decided to make myself scarce.

"it's only a shed"

So we were told. I can hardly wait until the painter gets done with this baby!

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For those who care about the process: there are approximately 30 cuts per section of two square panels. Two of us spent at least a day to get all the way around this thing with all the x-es. (It looked better without them.)

The other notable condition about this structure is the material(s) that comprises the outer layer: Hardi-Plank siding in 4 x 10 sheets, and Azek polyvinyl chloride trim in various sizes. Both materials are intended to last forever. This intent appears to have been achieved. The problem is the waste. Azek is fairly obnoxious stuff to work with - we didn't become carpenters in order to be plumbers, which is what it feels like now that we're building with PVC - and the sawdust will eventually get into the ground and the water system to everyone's detriment. PVC is made from guess what? Imported petroleum, of course. Wikipedia says worldwide production is expected to reach 40 million tons by 2016. The off cuts go to the landfill, and will eventually decay, breaking into small particles that will leach into the water system. One hundred years from now, they're not going to appreciate our desire for "convenient longevity."

But it appears to fit right in with the "Post Modern Condition" of the original structure, which I originally wrote about here, when we started this project.

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Chris Jordan

In writing the recent entry on Edward Burtynsky, I was inspired to look at Chris Jordan's work again. It's definitely worth a look, and especially his newest work Midway, from a recent journey to the North Pacific island that is located at the apex of the Pacific garbage gyre. This is more bad news about how we are poisoning ourselves, and everything around us. In this case it's thousands of young albatross birds that have died of starvation because they are being fed a diet of plastic garbage by their unknowing parents. Jordan has photographed hundreds of decayed corpses to show the contents of their body cavities. This is amazing and powerfully disturbing stuff. But obviously only through awareness can we hope to do anything to change the problem.

Which leads one to wonder, if you care enough to look at the photographs and be affected by them, what are you going to do to change your lifestyle so that you don't contribute to the problem? Our lives are full of conveniences that have unintended but powerfully negative consequences. How do we become aware of them?

Look at the photos and change your life.

an annual thing pt2

This tree, which resides in our front yard, has defied me to represent it adequately for years. I don't think this is "it" yet, but perhaps I'm getting closer. At least it's something different. The background is always the problem. Perhaps I will rent that lift and get it from thirty feet up.

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an annual thing

Every year I have to do it. Here's this year's version.

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Thanks Roger for asking about the D70.

Edward Burtynsky

 

The latest Burtynsky exhibit, Oil, is currently installed in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, in Washington D.C. Leaving the fam on the train for their long weekend in NYC, I walked across the city to the gallery to see this collection of phenomenal and extremely unsettling photographs, which is on display until December 13.

I'll admit to being hugely influenced by Burtynsky's work. Not all the images in the show are new, as they represent twelve years of his work from around the world, newly organized into a more potent theme than they have been grouped before. All his images represent massive consumption of resources, often showing the land from which the raw materials for the goods of our lives are extracted. Here there are two rooms of images from the oil fields in California west of Bakersfield around Belridge and Taft, and the oil sands of Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada, along with oil refineries in Houston, Texas and elsewhere.

From extraction and processing, he moves to consumption and motor culture, with mostly aerial images of highway interchanges, vast fleets of new automobiles awaiting distribution, and Las Vegas suburban sprawl stretching to the mountains at the horizon. Two fascinating landscape photos of motor culture show a motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota. One is in the center of town from an elevated perspective with thousands of motorcycles stretching to the horizon. The other is later that same day, a classic landscape of the surrounding mountains on the horizon, a beautiful evening sunset lighting the sky, the foreground filled with cars and bikes in the parking lot of a Kiss concert.

The final section is what Burtynsky terms "the end of oil." It consists of images of shattered oil fields in Azerbaijan, aircraft junkyards, the Oxford, California tire pile, massive collections of recycled oil filters and metal drums, and finally the oil tanker ship breaking operations in Bangladesh.

Much of this has been seen before in Manufactured Landscapes, but it's my first exposure to the large scale prints that Burtynsky creates for his large format photographs. The amount of detail can be overwhelming, as when I stood in the corner of one gallery and surveyed the images of the tire pile and densified oil filters and oil barrels and had to catch my breath at the sheer magnitude of the consumption. In another era, it would have been our awe at the sights of the Grand Canyon. Now our feelings of the sublime are wonder and guilt, in equal measures, at the use – and disposal – of so many natural resources.

It has been objected that Burtynsky's photographs are a gee whiz wonder at an exceptional phenomena. No doubt his production budgets are substantial, and in order to make it worth his while, he endeavors to find the biggest and most extreme example of whatever resource usage he wants to document. But the fact remains that these excessive conditions do exist, and on a global level are even more extreme than Burtynsky can document.

See the exhibit if you can, or look at his books. They are an uncomfortable reminder that nothing we do on this planet is without consequences, and when aggregated on a global scale, they become profound consequences.

All works hung on walls are by Edward Burtynsky.

seasonal greetings

What's with this "holiday" anyway?

Colorneg - TECH ALERT!

Listen up, all you Luddites. If you're still using film, and scanning images into the computer, you may need this plug-in for PS. I read about ColorNeg a year or so ago, and tried the demo version, which is fully functional but saves files with a grid over them. For whatever reason, it didn't seem to suit me at the time. Recently I tried it again and am much more favorably impressed, to the point that I purchased a copy. This permits use of registered copies of ColorPos and GamSat as well, all of which require 48 bit scans as input. For the color 4 x 5 negatives as scanned by Vuescan @ 1600 dpi x 16bit, my files are approximately 252 meg in size. Rather massive, but in fact PhotoPaint X4 gets around them without too much trouble even using the four year old Dell box. The point of this name dropping is that this is finally a way to scan problem color negative film that has never scanned consistently with the Epson software for the V700. You might want to give it a try - and let me know of your experiences.

widespread murder

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This landscape has been noticed over the years, if not daily, certainly frequently. What's with all the dead trees? There must be 30 - 50 mature sized trees that are standing dead. Where there's curiosity, there's a photograph - or three. Little was I prepared for what I found.

What I found is clear in the last four photos, but may not be apparent without some words. All the trees have been intentionally killed - by the hand of some tool wielding human with a plan. Since I was trespassing on the land, I have no idea who the owner is, or what their intention for it is. One can only imagine scenarios for what was in the mind of the perpetrator, and whether he was indeed the land owner or some wronged party seeking revenge.

As a member of a society that takes great stock in individual rights, and especially the rights of land owners, I can't really dispute what an owner does with the resources on his land. Although as a civil society we do indeed regulate with a high degree what land owners are permitted to build on their property. But in this instance, whether this land owner kills his trees over a period of several years, or chooses to rip them out and mulch them in a matter of days in the course of "improving" his land, I really have no place to say much.

Nonetheless, it makes me wonder what was going on in the mind of the hatchet man while he systematically went around this piece of property and cut a ring in the periderm of all the mature trees, a simple but surefire way to terminate the organisms.

15th annual Spirit Walk

Once more, I participate in the annual Historical Society fund raiser. This year's Sprit Walk, during which groups of patrons are guided along a tour of the historic areas of Charlottesville and encounter well known locals of the day, portrayed by volunteer actors, will take place October 23 - 25. This year I will try to find something of the character of Benjamin Franklin Ficklin, born in 1827, rasied in Charlottesville, and buried there next to his parents, with many an adventure in between.

on the level

It must have something to do with working as a carpenter and owning various tools that determine if the built world we create is a close approximation of some standard of level. When it comes to photography, many, if not all of my compositions of architecture or elements that are square or level in nature are approached in a way that preserves this “levelosity.” It's really hard for me to compose horizontals out of level. The verticals are ordinarily attended to by the view camera that has become my standard tool. It has a level bubble on it, or in the case of the Sinar, three, to make sure that I get the world captured in a level manner. In many instances there is also a symmetry issue to contend with, which one either has to consciously destroy, or submit to the designer's intent.

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Mike C. at the always provocative Idiotic-Hat blog has recently written about his tendency to try to get grids square with the edges of the frame. He displays an admirable technique in that he prefers not to work with a tripod, and certainly not a view camera or tilt-shift lenses.

This recent photo is definitely a step in a different direction for me. The original concept was to approach the wall in a typical manner: head on. Eventually that's not what seemed to work best. Not that this is a radical departure, but perhaps it will help me become more comfortable with compositions of buildings that are “out of level.”

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An interesting observation after the fact is that normal perspective has been reversed here: near portions of the building are smaller than distant sections. Possibly something to work on in the future.

words of wisdom

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Couldn't find them, after all.