Topic: Colorl (2 posts)

Utah Update

Since I left Utah two weeks ago you haven't heard a thing from me.

This is just a brief update to tell you what I am up to with the work I made. Job number one is to edit files, and begin to print the work. Some people like to wait a while, let the new work settle in a little, allow some perspective on what was done and I agree, this is important. But I also like to make some prints of files I know I want to see, not only a determiner whether I was on or not but to see if I was technically where I needed to be. 

This I have done. 

Life does intrude and, especially when returning from a trip like I took to Utah to photograph, all that life entails came flooding back. A little medical, some friends and family, a meeting or two, time spent online judging a grant competition (with a fast looming deadline!) and long hours at the studio working on files and making work prints.

Also, I spent a week on Martha's Vineyard with family for Thanksgiving.

Within the overall number of pictures I made, there are subsets, chapters in the overall body of work that will be from Utah. While I did make "incidental" photographs (the term I use for photographs made without any effort to make a series or any kind of narrative, pictures that stand alone), I also made separate series. These need a longer view and are far heavier lifting than just skimming through a few thousand flies to see what things look like.

Let me share with you some of what I am working on:

This is Factory Butte, a few miles west of Hanksville, Utah, at dawn. I photographed there one afternoon until the sun went down and then was back again the next morning at sunrise. If I had to give one reason for going to Utah this time it was this.

Something about this huge hunk of rock and eroded desert appeals on a deep level for me, for it is so shocking, so primitive, so large and such an anomaly.

I also find it challenging. How do you photograph just one "thing", perhaps it is a little like a still life.

I learned a long time ago, that when confronted with something truly amazing do not just make one or two photographs and hope for the best. If you can, follow though on your commitment to really work on your images, using every idea you have, perhaps over hours or even days, to return back home with the best you can. There's nothing worse than regretting what you didn't do when you are now thousands of miles away.

Are these finals? I have no idea. At this stage I make prints to just see what I've got. It will take time to finalize this work, trying different approaches, looking at all the files I shot. Already I've begun to print some in black and white, for instance. 

Next up? There is far more in this same huge valley in Utah than just Factory Butte. Stay tuned.

Topics: West,Digital,Colorl,New Work

Permalink | Posted November 28, 2018

What a relief

After last week's shoot in Washington at the National Museum of Health and Medicine (here) I headed down to Martha's Vineyard. To be truthful, it has felt like R and R as photographing those specimens is very difficult emotionally.

The Vineyard's perfect as it is a powerful cathartic for me and always has been.  I am using the same tools, the same camera I used last week to photograph endless jars of premature death; abnormal and deformed life cut short, to see what's here that is the same but different than the last time I was here back in early June. 

I very often start here:

 Which is a beach near the cliffs at Gay Head( Aquinnah).

You must have places you love and revisit to confirm they are still there and that assert that everything is okay with the world, even though we know all is not well.

I've being working in High Dynamic Range, which I do rarely as it often looks over cooked and artificial to me.

But there is no doubt that it allows us to handle a dynamic range that is way outside the camera's innate ability.

BTW: speaking of landscape photography, you might want to take a look at this

list: 100 landscape photographers worth knowing as it impressed me with just how much is out there that is very very good.

While here I will fly again as I am working on some new approaches to aerial photographing that I want to try out.

Stay tuned.

Topics: Northeast,Digital,Colorl

Permalink | Posted September 26, 2014