Putting them up, tearing them down ~

When I go out looking for yet another building to photograph, I often think about how long we’ve been putting them up.

And then I think about how long we’ve been tearing them down in order to put up yet another. My goodness we’re silly ol’ things.

Pick an Object ~ clear a spot

The man, who taught me photography, was the father of a dear friend. After months of building my courage to say 'I want to be a photographer like you' he just grinned and led me to his camera collection.

Photographers build camera collections. For some it’s their way of remembering where their journey has taken them, and for some others it’s about touching as much of the history of photography as they can.

My teacher’s collection focused on cameras that had proved themselves under the hardest of conditions; a titanium body that had withstood Viet Nam, or an Old Standard Rolleiflex that had survived both WWII and Korea.

I watched as he picked up a road and weather beaten Nikon F with a 1:1 ratio lens, saying that it still worked. We then made a trip to the darkroom fridge for 10 rolls of ASA 100/200 BW 24 Exposures film. After the e equipment and supplies came the 30 minute class on how to load, focus and shoot, under several light conditions a 35 mm camera.

Finally he gave me the first and only learning assignment I ever received from him.

“Take an object, put it down somewhere and using the available light, take 100 different shots of it. You can’t move it once you’ve found a place for it and taken the first picture. And if you decide to change the object you’ve chosen; you can only do so once. Come back every two rolls of film and we’ll develop them and we’ll see what ya got.”

Here’s what my lesson taught me: 1) Never choose fruit or something eatable; it just won’t last long enough, 2) It’s surprising how few shots are really “different” from each other in the first four rolls of film, 3) A grease pencil isn’t your friend, and 4) “…That’s cute ~ but no cigar”; as phrases go, can drive you crazy.

In the end it took me 15 months of spitting, kicking, walking away and calling names to get it done. But at the end of that time, my friend’s father didn’t have to tell me what I accomplished; I had figured that out all by myself. I think that was his plan all along.

I learned to adapt my ‘One lesson only’ as I went on. Whenever I wanted to explore another form of photography, I just chose another subject.

There’s a lamp in the corner of a room that I photograph now and then, just to remind myself how it’s done.

Amber Flowers...

Flowers are one of this earths visual blessings. Come spring I can't stop looking at them. Yes, the colors can be amazing. But when a bunch find its way to a jar on the table ~ Wow! And leaves are pretty impressive too.

Sepia Who?

Okay ~ there can still be found, those of us who started our photographic journey in a dark room. Hey there are even some who have taken a detour from the digital “light” room to find out what was so all fired mesmerizing about stumbling around in the dark with volatile chemicals in the first place!

Don’t get me wrong, digital is both fun and amazing, but it’s still nice to know where some things began, every now and then. So in the name of History…here is a brief note on where it began.

Sepia is derived from the Greek word for cuttlefish! And this is important because of this particular fish’s sac that produced a dark brown/red fluid that was used for ink by both the Romans and Greeks. An interesting aside ~ the fish that gave the world this wonderful liquid was found in what is now known as the English Channel.

Now don’t worry ~ I won’t go on about Alhazen; a great authority on optics in the Middle Ages (1000AD), and his invention of the Camera Obscura (that’s the pinhole camera you played around with, in fifth grade science). But rather ~ fast forward to the early eighteen hundreds and the discovery of practical photography. And right here and now I’d like to give a great big shout out to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia; for its help with all the pesky details! 1837 ~ Louis Daguerre created the daguerreotype and that was the first image that was “fixed” and did not fade. It also needed a lot less than thirty minutes of light exposure!

And fading led us to the need for “toning” and the use of chemical toners to “fix” images, and that was where a very old product found yet another, more modern use.

In the old world of film cameras “Toning” is a process carried out on ‘silver-based’ black-and-white prints to change their color. Some toners can improve the stability of the print and allow it a longer life, while other toners can make the print less stable.

From: Photography.com
“Sepia toning preserves pictures because of a chemical process that turns any silver in the developing photograph into a sulfide. This sulfide is more resistant to aging than silver. (And further) Of a black and white photo developed at the same time as one treated with sepia toning (stored in identical conditions), the sepia tone photo would last longer than the black and white.”

Thus endeth the lesson!:-)

Waiting...

Is anyone else waiting for Spring? It seems that a good amount of our moments are held in place by waiting. I watch others waiting while I look for something to do, somewhere to be as I wait too.

Where to begin...

There are those who love shooting in color and those who fall in love with the starkness of black and white and never recover. I fell somewhere in between. Sepia rounds the edges, softens the field and can even take us back in time. Small historical societies all over the US, have albums, diaries and boxes of faded amber images from days gone by. Perhaps that's why I choose Sepia, in one of its many shade, in my final print ~ That is when I'm not shooting in Black and White. Corners of rooms and forgotten objects ~ Such a delight.