a northern city, this time

Once again, I'm afraid I'm reporting old news that can't really be used by those on the east coast. Brother Roger and I did the Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibit at MoMA in NYC this past week. It closes on June 28, 2010, but will most likely travel elsewhere.

For a Thursday mid day in June, there were an awful lot of people in attendance, many of whom seemed to be French. New York always has a lot of French tourists, and many of them seem to attend an exhibit at MoMA during their stay in the city.

Photo journalism is not my thing, and coupled with the crowds it made it extremely difficult for me to engage in the material. There are many great photographs in the exhibit, but the prints are nothing special, having been printed by a number of sources over the years - or am I simply spoiled by the quality of current digital printing technology? The catalogue of the exhibit, which contains several long essays about HCB's career, also has all the photos hung on the walls. Definitely a simpler method of looking at the pictures, and I think in some cases, higher quality (some of the images are scans of negatives.)

a brief foray

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Back to the purely descriptive view. Once again, the lab is having troubles with the E6 machine, so I'm "reduced" to showing the pea shooter output.

We don't have landscapes like this around here, so this view results from a quick journey to the capital of the Confederacy. It's not far from here, and I find these places far more interesting than the restored portions of town. But then I realized, driving past the train station, that its neighborhood - amidst a thicket of massive concrete columns that support I95 and I64 with an incessant roar of traffic 75 feet above - is a completely transformed landscape. Entire city blocks have been closed off to the sky, and the station itself is crowded in by the interstate span that crosses the James River, passing only several feet from the front elevation of this Rennaisance Revival building from 1901. On the ground, the city has tried to make the best of a horrible situation, with a maze of pathways through a darkened "park" that never quiets. Was this an additional, intentional insult, 100 years after the end of the Civil War? No wonder we're still fighting here in Virginia.

somerset pt. 4

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One final view from our most recent trip to the abandoned brick works in Somerset, Virginia. Come winter time I've got to return to see if there are indeed clay pits out back of these buildings. Because surely the raw material for the bricks didn't come from any farther away than a half mile. One thing we've got an abundance of around here is red clay. I've learned that one doesn't go idlely walking in tall grasses, because the chiggers can be brutal. Later in the year, when the vegetation is mostly dormant, it will be "safe" to go poke around and see if there are some water filled pits from which the bricks from this plant would have come. As Edward Burtynsky has shown us, any man made edifice is bound to have a concomitant hole in the ground, somewhere.

somerset pt. 3

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The business part of the "works."

to Somerset we went pt. 2

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My version of the brick yard.

back again

We can't seem to resist returning to the same places over and over to find photographs. It was inevitable, somehow, that I would make another trip to this abandoned brick yard. I doubt that I'm done with it yet.

image by Dave Metcalf

This photo from the interior is by fellow photographer Dave Metcalf, who was a much appreciated companion on this foray inside a large abandoned warehouse with a long row of ovens.

Nearly a week later, I've still not managed to do anything with my own photographs from this outing. Could this be the end of film and me? Actually, it's the lure of video that still has me in it's grip (see previous entry.)

graduation video

After much mucking around, here's my first video out of the Canon 7D (from a rental camera,) also my first upload to Vimeo. It has been a blast being able to edit video on a laptop computer, a far cry from the days of Movieolas and Steenbecks, the equipment I last used to edit films back in the antediluvian '80's. It's still a ghastly amount of work - that hasn't changed. But somehow, it feels like it's within reach. Probably more delusions.

Village School 2010 Graduation Trailer from Kent Wiley on Vimeo.

time to move on?

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After five attempts to compose something from this landscape during the full moon rise (minus one night for this particular exposure), it's getting to be similar enough that I need to search for something different. On the other hand, now that the weather has turned warm again, it's incredibly pleasant being out in a nearby location at the intersection of moonrise and sunset, whether one or the other is obscured by clouds or not.

The bugs make their presence well known at that time of day, particularly in tall grass. But it's nothing to compare with the midges of Scotland that we encountered almost exactly four years ago, or the black flies last summer when we were in Grand Isle, MI. Photographers' preferred times of dawn and dusk also happen to be when midges and black flies swarm the most. Travelers to the beauties of the Highlands need to know about this nasty fact of Scottish life. In Michigan's Upper Peninsula the black flies swarmed badly enough to make large format photography (aka slow photography) exceedingly unpleasant along the shore of Lake Superior. In both locations, keep moving and the swarms are not usually unbearable. Set up a camera on a tripod for several minutes, and the hoards descend, bringing temporary insanity. Fortunately here in Central Virginia, the instances are far smaller, hardly approaching swarm status. But without some protection one is bound to return with mosquito bites.

Despite the blood sucking element to the environment, I'm likely to return repeatedly to this location.

over the hill and through the woods

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At least in this photo, I'm on the privileged side of life. But as predicted, I'm now fenced out of this location. The gaps have been plugged, and access is now denied. There might still be a gate that's not been finished, but it's only a matter of time before that gets closed up too.

burn baby burn

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Kind of a cheap, obvious shot. But I like it anyway. This is after all what these machines are ultimately for.

This comes from a week and a half ago, but since I'm still practicing "slow photography," as Sam Abel once termed it, it takes at least that long for something to go through my brain, the camera, the lab, the scanner, image manipulation, uploading, composition, and who knows what else. What's the hurry, anyway?

only slightly lost

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This one twenty paces from yesterday's entry. I'm ecstatic about the color from this roll of negative film. It's Portra 400 scanned and run through Colorneg before a few minor tweaks in Photopaint. Maybe it's only the location and the light, because I've certainly had a hard enough time in the past getting what I considered faithful colors from negative stock. It obviously works as a medium, since so many people use(d) it, but I've had a hell of a time getting color that appeals to me. Apparently it's my scanning technique.

I'm ready to use this as a movie location. It even suggests the hint of a story.

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'

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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?