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This blog is intended to showcase my pictures or those of other photographers who have moved beyond the pretty picture and for whom photography is more than entertainment - photography that aims at being true, not at being beautiful because what is true is most often beautiful..

>>>> Comments, commentary and lively discussions, re: my writings or any topic germane to the medium and its apparatus, are vigorously encouraged.

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BODIES OF WORK ~ PICTURE GALLERIES

  • my new GALLERIES WEBSITE
    ADK PLACES TO SIT / LIFE WITHOUT THE APA / RAIN / THE FORKS / EARLY WORK / TANGLES

BODIES OF WORK ~ BOOK LINKS

In Situ ~ la, la, how the life goes onLife without the APADoorsKitchen SinkRain2014 • Year in ReviewPlace To SitART ~ conveys / transports / reflectsDecay & DisgustSingle WomenPicture WindowsTangles ~ fields of visual energy (10 picture preview) • The Light + BW mini-galleryKitchen Life (gallery) • The Forks ~ there's no place like home (gallery)


Entries in tree(s) (5)

Friday
Nov202015

diptych # 187-89 (trees) / kitchen sink # 31 ~ some thoughts on B&W

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kitchen sink / dirty water ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
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birch ~ somewhere in Connecticut / near Swastika, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
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birch ~ Battery Park - Manhattan, NYC / Au Sable River near Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
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trees ~ Lake Champlain shoreline/ Peru, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen

As I have been making tree diptychs, which, BTW, are NOT my intended end product, it occurred to me after snooping around on the interweb that, when a tree is the primary visual referent in a picture, a B&W conversion is an interesting option.

I come to that conclusion because the overwhelming majority of trees, trunk wise, have no real color and what color they do have is primarily monochromatic. In addition, tree trunks usually exhibit a high degree of texture. Consequently, the combination of the monochromatic and textural characteristics of tree trunks is a fine referent for a B&W approach to picturing them. But, here's the caveat ....

.... not any old conversion from color to B&W will do.

Inasmuch as I have had a fair amount of experience, back in the good ol' days of B&W film, with using Wratten filters - green red, yellow, blue - to accentuate / de-accentuate the B&W tonal values of colors found in a scene, I am having a fair amount of success using the Image > Adjustments > Black and White color specific sliders tool in Photoshop. And Holy Digital Darkroom, Batman, the color based sliders are essentially infinitely adjustable Wratten filters.

And like so many advantages found in the digital darkroom, I can create a number of different conversion picture files using different color sliders and then blend the results into one final conversion file. That allows me to adjust the tonal values of multiple colors, something that was not possible in the analog film / wet darkroom days.

The net result of this type of B&W conversion can far exceed anything that was possible in the the good ol' days. I suspect Sir Ansel might have thought he had died and gone to heaven - he's most certainly dead but I have no idea were he might be other than in a box in the cold, cold ground - with the amount of control (Zone System on steroids) that he could have had in the B&W digital darkroom.

Thursday
Nov192015

diptych # 186 ~ congratulations to my inner photographic child

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juror's selection / "Alternative Cameras" exhibition • click to embiggen

The wait is over and the results are in (from last evening's mail):

Congratulations!

Thank you for submitting your work for PhotoPlace Gallery’s juried "Alternative Cameras" exhibition. Juror Susan Burnstine has chosen 35 photographs for the gallery exhibition, and an additional 40 photographs for display in the Online Gallery on the PhotoPlace Gallery website. It’s a wonderful collection of fine work.

We are very pleased to tell you that your work was selected for display in the Online Gallery.

Juror’s Statement:

Often perfection is a direct result of embracing imperfection. The term “happy accident” has become synonymous with wildly flawed alternative approaches including toy, pinhole and homemade photography, as they frequently rely on elements of chance and luck. But there have been some who have tamed these unpredictable, faulty beasts to yield purely poetic results by letting go of technical control and connecting with their inner photographic child. .

It was great joy to spend time with these wonderfully imperfect images and I applaud everyone who submitted. Having to narrow down a selection for the physical and online exhibits was an immense but gratifying task. In the end, the selected images seamlessly merged consistent aptitude with an element of unpredictable chance, thus creating lyrical results. I congratulate all the selected artists and sincerely thank everyone who submitted such fantastically flawed work. ~ Susan Burnstine

The juror's selections can be viewed HERE


an aside: I must admit that, after viewing the juried selections for the Alternative Cameras: Plastic to Pinhole exhibition, I feel a bit like a stranger in a strange land. Sort of like, what the hell am I doing here in this company of picture making strangers? Because, other than my long-past picture making affair with "flawed alternative approaches" and "letting go of technical control and connecting with [my] inner photographic child" - my decades long use of my SX-70 cameras and film - I have had only a passing interest in making "fantastically flawed work".

As mentioned previously, I have played around with a smattering of pinhole picture making but only as a matter of having a little picture making "fun" with no long term commitment to the process. Nevertheless. I have had, and still do, a continuing interest in viewing "crappy camera" pictures as they fall into my field of vision - meaning that I don't seek them out but instead encounter them on the basis of chance.

All of that written, I have yet to come to grips with my attraction to such pictures other than to note that I like the way "crappy" pictures look. As the exhibition juror wrote, the pictures are visually "poetic", "lyrical" and "dream-like", visual qualities which, in fact (contrary to my chosen genre of picture making - "straight" picture making), do prick my eye and sensibilities.

Perhaps, in an effort to come to grips with the genre, I have to think of alternative camera pictures not as photographs but, rather, as images made with the photographic process. Images which indeed create a "idiosyncratic and deeply personal visual landscape" but which stands in direct contrast to the medium's intrinsic and inseparable relationship to and as a cohort of the real.

I don't think it's a stretch to write that I need that bit of a dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin rationalization - i.e. images, not photographs - to comes to terms with my like of the "crappy" pictures made with "crappy" cameras. That way I won't feel like I have betrayed and abandoned my long held picture making beliefs and M.O.
Wednesday
Nov182015

diptych # 185 / civilized ku # 3007 ~ trees and rain

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pool cover / rain ~ Lake Placid, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
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trees ~ Manhattan, NYC / Upper Jay, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen

Tuesday
Nov172015

civilized ku # 3006 / diptych # 184 ~ more trees

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bathroom cabinet ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
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trees ~ Manhattan, NY / Mt. Jo - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen

I am working out my trees editing by creating diptychs which place a picture of urban tree with a picture of a natural environment tree.

Comments are always appreciated.
Thursday
Nov122015

diptych # 182 ~ trees, trees and more trees

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trees ~ Old Montreal in Quebec, Canada / Arezzo Region in Tuscany, Italy • click to embiggen
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the mother lode / trees screen grab ~ • click to embiggen

Had an overnight stay in Lake Placid. Leaving LP shortly to get to Plattsburgh for a doctor appointment (scheduled checkup) so by necessity this entry is short and sweet.