Views from the Edge Blog

The Sky

Sun, 15 Aug 2010 10:30:46 -0500

Unfortunately no trip out west this year. Stuck in fly-over country, to get a way I have been looking at the sky both during the day and at night. The sky has long been a vehicle for the imagination. There is something calming about watching the clouds morph into one shape than another as they float on. The sky also inspires wonder when I think about how the atmosphere helps makes life possible on this planet. It is sad how some among us feel it is too big to damage and therefore can be treated as an open sewer.

The photographer Alfred Stieglitz photographed clouds, a series he called "Equivalents." You can read more about them here. I have admired them for years and do not wish to copy them. As a student of art history I try to avoid recreating something I have seen before.

For me the clouds are abstractions or inkblots that take you on a psychic journey.

The images will be titled "Clouds" then the date. You can see them under "Color," then "Air."

New Film, New Work

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 15:47:41 -0600

This was my first effort without Kodak’s now discontinued High Speed Infrared film. In August of 09 Miss-T and I went to Utah. On the trip I used both digital and black-and-white infrared film. I put off getting the film processed because I was afraid to see the results.

I had used Kodak Infrared film for a longtime. The lose of it threatened to end my work. It seemed there were 2 choices: have my DSLR Nikon’s sensor converted to infrared or find a substitute film. After considering digital I realized that what I liked about the infrared film was its grittiness and it’s serendipitous quality. Yes, I could get a filter for Photoshop to ad the grain to the digital image, but what would be the point. The digital examples that I had seen just looked too perfect, like they came out of some Hollywood computer graphics shop.

After studying the infrared film examples, I decided to use Efke AURA IR820 35mm Black-and-White Infrared Film. The overall look seemed the closest to the defunct Kodak film. But it is painfully slow, so slow that a tripod is required in bright sunlight. I did some testing with the film and was not very happy with the results. Due to time constraints, I was committed to the Efke film and filter combination for the Utah trip. So in my mind it was a total crap shoot. I shot 18 rolls, miserable the whole time with the tripod, the long exposures and bracketing like crazy. The temperature was 100+ (for more on heat, see Arches National Park). That I could tolerate. It was not knowing if anything would be usable that made me tense and irritable.

Upon our return I was still apprehensive about the results. Finally in December I sent the film to my friend Linda McCausland. She was the darkroom tech at the George Eastman House before owning a custom photo lab and hosting photo workshops on Cape Cod before moving to Prince Edward Island, Canada. She is hosting a paper-making workshop this coming June. She processed the stuff and I was pleasantly surprised when the film came back and saw the contact sheets. If you need black-and-white film processing, including Efke infrared or black-and-white printing, contact Linda, you won’t be sorry.

So now I have the negatives to scan then clean-up with Photoshop. There is a lot of fun work ahead. You should start to see new images black-and-white images on the Web site in a month. The color work is already posted. So keep coming back.

MFA: 9th Annual American Landscapes

Tue, 1 Sep 2009 06:26:05 -0500

Above is the photograph that was accepted into the 9th Annual Landscape Show, a national juried show at the Maryland Federation of Art Gallery (MFA). The exhibit runs from September 17th to October 18th of 2009. The opening reception is September 27th from 3 to 6 p.m. It is a real treat to be included in this landscape show for two years in a row. So if you are in the Annapolis Maryland area stop in and take a look.

The Utah Sky

Sun, 9 Aug 2009 21:32:50 -0500

For most, clouds are just there, part of the wallpaper of our lives. I don’t often see people starring at the sky unless it threatens to spawn something nasty. But for me, I have always loved watching clouds. The skies out here in southern Utah are a cloud watchers dream.

Some days the skies are cloudless and a brilliant blue. When the clouds do float in an already fantastic landscape is further enhanced. Clouds interact w/the land. For example, while driving through a vast flat area of desert, covered w/scrub grass and a line of buttes along the distant horizon. The scrub grass was green and the sand and buttes were red-brown. The sky was filled w/puffy white clouds and the hot afternoon sun cast their shadows down onto the land creating a dappled pattern. As the shadow pattern slowly moved over the scrub and the buttes, their colors were altered. Seeing this, I began to wonder what the altitude of the clouds was, how fast were they moving and what would it be like to feel the shade created by those clouds.

I have seen so many interestingly shaped clouds in the Utah sky. The scale of most things out here is monumental and timeless. The sky is no different and like this land, it has to be seen to be believed. It is flat out awesome!

Arches National Park

Sat, 8 Aug 2009 19:49:48 -0500

This is Miss-T and my 3rd visit and the place still holds wonder for us. Add this to your list of must-see places and get there while you are still ambulatory because it is a vertical space. Of course you can drive-by and hold your camera out the car window like some tourists do or you can get out and use your feet and see things that will amaze you. Take a hike out to the park’s most famous resident, Delicate Arch. It is amazing how the stereotypical bus load of tourists get to the arch. It is a good 3 mile hike and much of it straight up. But they do and then they queue up for their pic in front of the arch. This is a similar situation to being at the Louvre and trying to get a look at the Mona Lisa.

Fortunately it is not like this all the time. Most of the trails separate people that think they are going for a stroll down main street from those that know better.

Our favorite hike is out to Double-O Arch. You get to walk along the tops of the fins. The fins are like the arch at the top of the page only w/o the arch. There are several of them next to each other; some are close, others are not. There is a drop between them. What I find fascinating about them is you can see similar forces at work on them only at different stages. For example you can see how the fins will eventually break off from each other. You can see how it happens, the shapes formed by the cracking, how it is always the same only in different stages on each fin. On some of them, you can see that arches are beginning to form, again there are common characteristics in different stages of progression. It is like the stone has a memory or there is a common DNA at work. According to the pamphlet you receive at the park gate, this is a 4.2 mile hike roundtrip, we took the “primitive trail” which lived up to its name for the return trip and adds 2.2 miles onto the total. We have our cameras. We can’t go more then a few feet w/out taking a photograph so it takes us all day to get out and back. The journey is spectacular and awe inspiring. While I am making my photographs I am thinking about the timeless quality of the immense objects that occupy this space, what happened here to form all of this and how unreal it all seems.

The day we walked the spine (fins) it was 102 degrees. There are no conveniences out there so you must bring it w/you. I had 3 old Nikon film camera bodies loaded w/infrared film, 2 lenses for them, 1 Nikon DSLR and a lens for it in my backpack. Plus 6 water bottles; 3 Powerbars, each turned into a mass of goo, a cheese sandwich w/mustard and a tripod. You hear people say “it is a dry heat.” Well it is, any moisture is instantly evaporated. The first thing you need is a chapstick. After a day here my lips felt like they do in the dead of winter. Then of course you need at least a gallon of h2o. I like a few bottles of a sports drink and few of h2o. Take a camera but maybe not as may as me. When you are finished go into Moab (I love those old testament names you find in Utah) have a big meal and burp. You have earned it. I always feel like I have been to the edge of the earth and back after a trip on the spine.

Drawings

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 11:01:31 -0500

An exhibit of my drawings can be seen at Plant Perk from the 5th through the 30th of September. The opening will be part of the September Art Walk from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Hope the weather will be nice and you can attend.

This is a collection of pencil drawings including some made w/colored pencils. The drawings span a number of years and all share a common influences. They are: astronomy, music and monuments of ancient civilizations. You can get a sneak peak here.