THE SELTZER KING

Based on the long lost novel of Victor Hugo - Le Roi de Seltzer - this is the saga of Henri Mer and his single-minded quest to bottle seltzer in 19th century France. The movie was directed by the Canadian-born director Victor Hugo (no relation to the novelist) . This indy production features several exciting scenes where Henri is wounded by exploding bottles while he follows his dream of portable sparkling water. It stars Thomas Hanks (no relation to Tom Hanks) as the shlepper, and Madonna as his long suffering mother - Marie. Limited release.

Restaurant, Chinatown

Opus Innova Albums

I ordered two Opus Innova Albums, (smooth cotton high white) from ShadesOfPaper.com

There are profiles for the paper. $50 a book for 20 double-sided hinged sheets with a printable letter size (A4) area. I found profiles for Photo Black ink as well and templates showing margins etc.

So, in theory, I should be able to make an impressive fine art book for $50 plus ink and labor. What I'd do with such a book - I don't know yet - but I've wanted to do this for a long time and doing a duotone hardcover is just way too expensive. Believe me - I've checked.

Self-made books

My first portfolio ever is finished. I did it all in InDesign, which for something simple like a portfolio is pretty quick to use.

But after the papers were slipped into their holders in the album - I got more ambitious. I have these books in me - and it is so expensive to produce a short offset run of good quality - it just seemed crazy that you couldn't produce a good quality inkjet-based book.

I don't mean where you ftp your photos and someone else does the printing - probably in 4-color, but a process where I can assemble my own hardcover inkjet book with say 40 photographs.

And these do exist - with different methods for the binding. In general, they seem too expensive to do in any sort of real quantity - but for gifts or maybe for a few special people - it can be done.

Light Impressions, for example - has a hard cover, post-bound system where you print on hinged paper (luster or matte) which can then be assembled with a nice cover, and if you want translucent interleaving tissue. To do an 8 x 8 inch book with 25 photographs is going to cost something like $50 for the sheets + $25 for the cover. So you're in the $75 range, not to mention the paper you'll botch for one reason or another.

Inexpensive hinged paper is the easiest way to approach this. But I've yet to find it. I'm tempted to hole punch and crimp my own.

Then I came across an adhesive based system where you use your own letter-sized paper, by DigifilmLabs and so I ordered one. I ordered one where I'd use my own paper and now the cost is down to $25 without counting the cost of paper.

Lyson even has something called Stone Hinge books - but I couldn't find much about them - such as pricing on their site.

So there you have it. I really am in publishing mode right now and one way or another I'm determined to get a high quality book done - even if I have to do the whole thing myself.

Oh - and this page (InkJetArt.com) is the best resource I've found so far on the various ways of going about this stuff.

* * *

Innova makes the Opus Presentation Album and I think this is just what I'm looking for.

duotone posters

Can anyone recommend a print house for doing high quality duotone posters?

Madonna, Escalator

From escalator, Metropolitan Museum

Just as a note, I've begun to use PhotoKit from Pixel Genius for all my color conversion (this was a digital shot). It uses non-destructive layers; has a tremendous amount of burn / dodge features; i.e. with PowerRetouche changes are made to the background layer; yes you can create a copy of the background and work on that but you can't see what Retouche is doing then. Photokit is a set that in some ways overlaps the functionality of Retouche - but it never touches the background layer so you can always do things like add layer masks or change opacity of the Photokit layer.

The image was shot raw - the red / orange was pumped up, and then:

Selling 2002, 6 train

Passenger, 6 Train

It's odd, but street photography seems to be hardest thing to sell. I say odd because it is also the most difficult to do well. If you are lucky enough to capture an evocative moment - there's a good chance that the lighting, or the framing won't be perfect. But more importantly - odds are that it will be of a specific human being. And a stranger at that. Not even a celeb. Why should the celeb be so much more interesting than the stranger? Answer - because we have already invested them with our own hopes and dreams. They are - essentially - already an abstract entity. Ready-made icons.

How can we read all of this into a complete stranger? Someone who is flesh and blood and is taking the subway - just like we are. How can that stranger become iconic and allow us to clothe them with our own feelings? They are just so specific.

One thing I've noticed is that the stranger, or strangers in street photography become more iconic if they are abstracted in some way.

By this I mean other elements such as fog, mist, halos, clusters of meaning make the image palatable. Is this an heretical street photography theory?

Blurred or abstract street shots become enigmatic - and at the same time closer to traditional ideas of beauty.

To counter-act specificness - the street photographer wants to juxtapose several ideas in the same frame. Mystery - which is to say, non-specifness increases as the forms counteract each other and bring an ambiguity to the frame.

With all that being said - I am drifting back to the dream of the street.

Memorial on 5th

Memorial Day Definition: a three-day holiday. A time of sales. Original meaning forgotten. Dwindling connections to the past. 50% off. Arms and legs off. Honey, spray some OFF on my arms, the mosquitos are murder this year. Unofficial start of summer. Hamburgers on the grill. Red poppies on lapels. Broken hearts. Busted lives. Heroes and villians. Telegrams from the War Dept. Loss of loved ones. Zero percent financing on selected vehicles. Zero percent left of my ancestor. My shell-shocked uncle. Those who never returned. Buy one get one free. Nothing is free.

Aquarium

#1



#2

Children's Zoo, Central Park. You can stick your head in these things to get closer to the fish, but they're so dirty you can't see anything. Did a lot of shooting here, wide open, slow shutter and Tri-x -with the Leica M3. So the problems I was having with IR film must be related to the cloth shutter on the M3. Phew.

My father

convinced me to enter a couple of photo contests. I started off with the Spider Black and White Awards ($35 per entry). I submitted Crossing Brooklyn Bridge under the People section. I've always had a dislike for art contests in general. I don't expect to win anything - so I can't see any disappointment in store - but there's something about the idea of these contests that seems obnoxious. I haven't analyzed the feeling but it has something to do with the inability of anyone to quantify art. But I'll play the game and enter a couple to please my father who has been pestering me about this for about ten years.

When I told him that I had been receiving e-mail offers for years about entering contests he said that he almost hung up the phone on me - he was that upset.

My portfolios arrived from Light Impressions so now there's one more project to finish up. I've been too busy to even open the box and see what they look like.

Infrared is going on the back burner for a while. I have a hankering to shoot straight photography again with ye olde tri-x.

Sales have been downright dismal - but I have about five irons in the fire (whatever that means) and maybe one of them will ignite. I'm always curious about where these idioms come from: irons in the fire.

Very busy

with a bunch of photo projects that I can't talk about yet.

MRI

"After Billy Wagner's performance against the Yankees yesterday, Willie Randolph told the trainer to bring him in for a brain scan. This is the result.

In the center you'll note a bird's-eye view of the field at Shea conspicuously missing the pitcher's mound. This dysfunctional perception of one's immediate environment, known as the Looper Syndrome, is common among Met closers.

Wagner's condition was confirmed this morning when the trainer asked him where he was yesterday around 4 PM and he said at the Taco Bell in Flushing." - Courtesy of Lester.

Field of Nightmares

Dreams, Shea Stadium




Slide

This was IR film (what else) . It was a memorable day. I had some glitches (so did the Mets) - between the shutter on the M3 which needs to be adjusted; and loading one roll of IR film in what I thought was shade (without changing bag) and the first half of the roll was completely fogged. Won't do that again. I was shooting with two cameras, the M3 and the Bessa R2A and I forgot that with the Bessa you need to manually set the rangefinder frame for the lens you're using until after I took a couple of shots which could have been good... Oh well. I managed to salvage two or three interesting shots.

P.S. The problem with the M3 is that if I use speeds of 1/100th of a sec. or less with IR film the right side of the frame is apt to show motion blur. I shot loads of Tri-x at low speeds without a problem. So I'm thinking it might have something to do with the fact that it's a cloth shutter.

Reading

The great thing about literature is that there is always some new discovery. I've been reading a lot of Wodehouse (not only the Jeeves series) and loving it. And at the same time I found Carson McCullers books buried away somewhere that I hadn't read.

There is a portrait of McCullers on the cover of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter in b&w, and I was just staring at it before opening the book. It looks like McCullers is sitting on top a coal heap and looking so mournful. You can't tell if she is looking at the camera or just staring blankly. What a sad picture. On closer inspection, I see that it's not a coal heap, but just the way the plants or weeds around her look.

Open the cover, curious to see who took such a piercing photo: none other than HCB. Man - that guy never fails to amaze me.

e n g l i s h

Since things are starting to hop around here and I can't talk about any of it - I decided to give my alter ego Tex a chance to have some blog time. Tex - are you around?

Sure am pardner.

Dang. They finally made ENGLISH our official language. That's fine as cream gravey.

First time ah strolled into Starbucks - those flannel-mouths jest got my dander up when they started yammering about Vente something 'er other. Hey sidewinder, ah just want a heap o' coffee.

Ah'd take out some of them French words too: such as quoi-sant??? I can't pronounce it. Give it an English name such as crescent. Ah got a beauty of a crescent wrench, why do I have to call it a croissant? This is plumb local.

Ah'd rename the danged states 'n cities too. Dang it. Los Ang-o-les? Ah'd jest as well call it Angel City and be done with it.

Ah'd test those pesky Brits who claim to speak good English. Ah can't understand a dang blame thing they say.

Speak Amurican!! Dang it. Speak Amurcan - like me. And if you don't like it: hobble yer lip.

The Hilton Trail

I had wondered for a long time how my images were used when they were purchased for the renovation of the Millenium Hilton Hotel (downtown NY). I searched around on the web and found these two shots taken by a guest. Of course, I had no idea it was done as a montage, but it looks like it turned out fine.

items

: I'll be at the Mets / Yankees game on Sat. I plan to shoot it with infrared. I haven't seen that done before, probably for a good reason, but I want to see how that field shows up. Hope its a good sunny day and that Pedro is pitching.

: I heard something about a new movie coming out which claims that Christ was married and had kids. You'd think the catholic church would be up in arms about it, but I haven't heard a peep out of them.

I can't remember the name of it though. Sounds interesting. What is it called? Michaelangelo's Road? Something like that. Haven't seen much about it in the newspapers or television. It may have been at the Canned Film Festival. Was it based on a book or something? I'm not sure. A pretty good idea for a story though. Might be a best seller someday.

I figure it must be one of those low-budget indy movies and that the producers will slowly build publicity by word-of-mouth.

Okay, just being sarcastic. I have never seen a movie get such free publicity since - actually I can't think of another movie. It's been documented on the History Channel, The National Geographic Channel, every cable news station, Oprah, The View, and now the Animal Channel is looking for a tie-in.

Well - I wish Opie good luck with it.

Self Promotion

I'm involved in serious self-promotional projects now. These fall under the heading of marketing which I have neglected. This means things like entering photo contests, which I haven't done before; pursuing more commercial venues such as corporate art dealers; and some other obvious things I should have done years ago but wasn't ready to do.

For the first time I'm doing a more formal portfolio with InDesign. In other words, I'm treating what I've created over the years in what I hope will be a more business-like way.

Since I can't write much about these ventures because it would intrude on the privacy of actual people - I'm back to keeping a private journal which may be of interest later on.

Oh -and Paypal and all that - has worked out well. A few orders came through with no complaints and I decided to cut the merchant account which has been charging me $50 a month and taking a very steep cut of the credit card orders over the years. I also added five new prints to the Photography Store. More later...

In terms of

how to make a living in this field that chose me, I'm starting to move away from the web as a commercially viable place (at least on its own) and into the so-called real world.

I've ordered several portfolios from Light Impressions, and I am going to concentrate my efforts on reaching corporate art buyers.

This web site was never supposed to be the sole source of income. Frankly, it's been okay for me - but I've got a big cat to feed and I'm tired of mooching off of family and friends.

It's going to be a little slow in the blog for a while as I work on this project. But of course I can always throw up some political comment which will predictably turn into red v. blue.

Hey, I didn't know you could turn comments off or on for particular entries. Is that new or I just missed it.

THE TITANIC PICTURE

The rage in art galleries (when did it start?) is big prints. Really big prints. While I was printing some of my 5 x 7's for a portfolio, I wondered (as is I always do): why? And it struck me: it's the same phenomenom as the BIG MOVIE SCREEN and the BIG EFFECT and the LOUD SOUNDTRACK.

You can't get it at home on t.v. - though that is changing too. One of my friends has a t.v. which takes up half his living room.

Anyway - the idea is the same.

And according to my theory - the BIG CRAZE will get worse because you can't print that size at home.

A second corollary: JEEZ, IT MUST BE GOOD. THINK OF THE COST TO PRODUCE SUCH A PRINT. JEEZ. Think of the square footage. If you took it down and put it outside on the lawn you could play football on that thing.

If it follows the same path as cinema, there should be 3-d prints soon, but no one will like them much because of the stupid glasses.

Hold on a sec. Let me get these on. Wow - is that Half Dome? Gives me vertigo just to look at it.

Good Bye Old Cart

I fell asleep thinking about the whole cart aspect and decided: what the hell I'm going to switch to paypal payments. Too many problems with my own cart, with the merchant account (they take a monthly fee whether I sell anything or not for an idiotic report that I usually rip up and toss in the garbage). Their transaction fees aren't low either.

I don't want to pay another $300 or so bucks for the SSL certificate. Plus it pissed me off that Thwarte didn't notify me the thing was going to expire.

Plus - this way I don't have any part of the site that relies on ASP.

But the clincher was: if Paypal does "go down" - I won't be the only one complaining. I should have the Paypal cart in place by end of day.

Well - good bye old cart. You were nothing but headaches.

oh, that's nice

my thwarte ssl certificate expired and no one from thwarte notified me.

so i had to find out about it from someone who wanted to place an order today. it expired April 5, 2006. gadzooks. how many orders did i lose because of that?

* * *

the color prints are looking fab. took a little bit of color management settings but i'm in good shape now. along with the infrared shots, i'm going to put some of the painted prints up for sale; and everyone in the family who's seen the painted dad in hot tub wants one (and even a couple of people who aren't in the family. i've been working on other painted ones in my spare time. the one thing i found was that it's better for me to start with a b&w negative or a digital shot that's been converted to b&w. if i try to paint a color shot i'm way too influenced by the existing colors.

* * *

i also think that the tablet / pen (the cheap wacom) doesn't support "pen tilt" and i'm starting to think i need that.

* * *

There are a bunch of interesting commercial photo opportunities coming my way. I'll write about them if they pan out. I am heading in new directions.

* * *

Removed the Google ads from the blog. I think their presence was cramping my style.

The Google Ads in the blog seem harmless at first - when they start to bring in money - I at least - found that the stuff I was writing about became influenced by them. I mean - I know I was writing about colonoscopies for a long time - but I don't think that whoever reads this blog wants to know the best place for a virtual colonoscopy. Well, then maybe I shouldn't write about non-photography stuff. Nah.

Rollei R3 Film

Rollei R3 Monochrome Film (Rollei European Site)

"Film speed is variable from ISO 25 to ISO 6400, allowing the material to be used in practically any light. This is made possible by a multilayer design with cubic silver-halide crystals of different size embedded in the various layers. Spectral sensitivity also covers a wide range from orthochromatic to panchromatic right into the infrared. "

Rainforest Entrance

I printed most of the good infrared shots as 5 x 7 proofs today. I'm superstious enough not to want to jinx it - but there are four or five beautiful, mysterious prints in the set. Bits and pieces in the prints sort of peer out from behind the leaves. For example, my reflection is in the shot below. No, not the large figure on the left (that was a woman on the other side of the glass feeding the Tucans) but just to the left of the doors. And the doors are not a reflection either - they are painted to blend in with the forest - which they really do in this shot. I had to study this shot for a while to figure out how the pieces came together.

So - I know - it's not for everyone. I wonder what I would have thought of it ten years ago when I was in my realism phase. But today - it seems to hold up for me.

My only problem with the IR film is the awful curl that makes it tough to get the strip into the scanner holder. It's pretty funny to watch because half the time the damned thing curls up at both ends before I can snap the holder shut.

There's probably some film uncurler somewhere - or the way things are going with film - maybe not.


Entrance to Central Park Zoo rainforest. IR film.





Version II, Hedges & Woman (ir film)

NSA and Chinese Takeout

So the story breaks that the NSA has been secretly been collecting or trying to collect a record of every domestic phone call (not the content, just the phone number) made in the United States. Qwest is the only phone company that refused to turn over records. We are talking about billions and billions of calls.

What you are telling me is that when I call for Chinese takeout, the phone number of Lili's Noodle House is added to the database. That's right. Every phone call.

Now the idea is that someone at the Noodle House calls their cousin Jun who in turn calls his friend Mary who works at Walmart. Mary has called her doctor to make an appointment to treat her acne problem.

And on it goes. Eventually, 1 million links later - there is an intersection with another 1 million link trail to a terrorist phone number. The NSA is using a supercomputer to spit out the number and it only takes three months. Oh, the terrorist has long ago discarded the phone, but no matter. I don't see this as efficient.

What they should do is put a video camera in every house and be done with it. If you turn the monitor off - then the homeland security police arrive. Or maybe ankle bracelets so we can track everyone's movements. That would work even better. Sure, you'd have to sacrifice a bit of privacy - but c'mon - we are up against a mortal enemy.

Today's slogan: Data mining = Safety

shooting notes

2nd trip to c.p. zoo. meter at 100; 25 filter; bessa (remember that the 35mm with goggles does not fit on the bessa); first couple of shots on 5th avenue were strictly according to meter; overcast; something like f4 & 1/60th

tucan - woman was feeding them - very little sunlight - didn't want to use the flash while she was there i was expecting someone to come over and say "no flash here" and that would have spoiled the rest of the shoot. based on last time i shot the Tucan I opened up another stop to f2 and shot at 1/30th.

then inside. first to the bat cave. very tricky since the glass that encloses them is angled out. mostly shot at f4 with flash full power, manual set to distance i wanted; some shots were with the flash and lens right up against the glass to cut out reflections.

but the rain forest itself was the most interesting because they keep releasing steam (vapor) whatever to create the humidity. now the whole thing is glass enclosed. my theory (will see later) is that some infrared is cut by the glass - but i don't know that.

did several variations with the flash. some assuming that the meter reading was close and just using it as a bit of extra fill; other shots assuming there was next to no ir in the room and going with full flash.

the last few shots were without any flash, just going by meter reading to see how much ir is being radiated in there.

with all the camera bag switching i forget to bring along the finder for the 28mm (which is all I shot with.) in terms of pictorial content - there were some interesting chances.

RESULTS:

First off, the shots I did in the glass enclosure without flash were fine. even over-exposed. so there's lots of infrared in there.

One of the full-flash shots of the bats actually came out - but the bat was flying too fast for the flash (I guess) because it has motion blur.

I blew a couple of interesting shots (flash used) where people were in the scene against glass background. They're just way too blown out. In general, the flash used in wide angle shots where there was lots of distance in the shot gave a really weird - almost super realistic look except for the light fall-off. i would say that unless you need the flash to try and do something like the bats, or this strange fish i was after behind glass - either turn it off or get someone behind me to hold a white card to bounce off. the direct flash kills the softness of the ir. again - though one shot is intriguing. this is good in a way since i can go back next time with the M3 so I can use my goggles / 35mm.

NEXT:

I still have one thing left to try and that's the deeper IR filter. I also think that for outside work - seals, etc. I'm better off with regular old tri-x. Seals (actually they're sea lions) in water - with IR - you don't want to know.

Okay I've Figured

out a bunch of things about using the flash with infrared film. I'm not going to waste another roll on my apartment. Back off to the zoo tomorrow. I'll go into the details after I've gotten some spectacular shots.

Probably a good time to do all this experimenting since sales have been zilch the last two weeks. Just weird inquiries that I'm sure will pan out to nothing.

The Tucan print really is fantastic. It takes me back to some primeval time. That rain forest keeps pulling at me.

I waited as long...

as I could until it was evening here to do my infrared tests with the flash. Closed the curtains, turned off all the lights. Very dark. Could hardly see my hand in front of my face. I picked up the camera and looked through the viewfinder - and then it struck me: I don't know about you but I can't see much and definitely can't focus in absolute darkness. I need night goggles. Duh. For test purposes, I stuck on the 28mm without an IR filter (since I wanted the poor film to get all the IR light it could from the flash), and then started at f2.0 & 1/30th (speed doesn't matter); and would turn on a light, focus on something, turn off the light and then shoot. I wasn't sure the flash was even working. The cat didn't seem to react one way or another. So I did a shot pointed towards a mirror just so I could see if anything was going off - and it was. You would have to be looking directly at the flash - in the dark - to see it go off, and even then you probably wouldn't know what the hell it was.

So the first half of roll I played around with bouncing the light off what are pretty high white ceilings, and the second half I added the lowest amount of tungsten light so that I could at least see what I was aiming at. I think that's a more realistic test since I don't expect to be shooting in total darkness. The film is washing now. I took a peek at the last two frames and there was stuff on them. (Oh, the other mistake I may have made in the beginning - not waiting for the flash to recycle before shooting again - but I'll know which ones those are since they will be clear leader). Maybe the whole rest of the roll will be clear... dunno what to expect.

* * *


it may be as ugly as an undercover police shot - but this was done in absolute total darkness. the floor lamp was behind me. i turned it on. focused. and then turned the lamp off and took the shot. the extreme drop off is most probably from the way the rig i have cuts off the spread of light. if you want to do this without the flash drop off (and still keep the gel from melting) - you (I) need to use more of a cone shaped for the gel holder.

bounced flash was very underexposed although i tried to compensate by shooting wide open. so that's going to be out.

i'm going to study the negs. and compare them with my notes such as they were. btw, nothing in this photograph looks remotely like anything in my apartment. i'm not kidding. for example i look at the thing hanging on my door - and it looks like pajamas. i looked at what was actually hanging on the door and i still wasn't sure how that had turned into white and black pajamas. turns out its a green shirt with black strips.

my floor, which i can say has seen better days - it doesn't look like this. it's like only the dirt and stains showed up.

i won't draw any conclusions about this yet.

i should get to the central park zoo soon to try it out in the bat house (very little light), and the tropical rain forest enclosure. it may turn out to be the most awful look i've ever produced or the most beautiful. i don't know.

* * *

After looking at the negs. and my notes, I'm starting to think that I'd do better by just sticking a glass deep- or light- red filter over the flash and let it mix with what ambient light there is. The flash will be visible in the dark - but the idea here was never to be invisible - though that might be a nice side effect. The idea was to get the same look I was getting with the red filter over the lens in daylight in a location with little infrared light. I'm going to do another series of tests tomorrow with the red filter. Ugh, that freakin' film is costly.

Beckerman Workin'

By Special Arrangements with Matt Weber, i.e. he sent it to me. Matt suggested framing the Chrysler building in the rectangle (as he did here) - and sure enough I said - nah. That's just my natural obstinancy at work. Sometimes, if you tell me that my name is David I'll tell you it's Dave and visa versa. That sort of stubborness is a blessing and a curse. But it is related somehow to tenacity - and that's something you can't get by without if you want to be creative.

More Infrared Flash Tech Stuff

First I placed the Lee 87 Polyester Gel Filter over the Sunpak Auto 383 (guide 120 ft) and did one flash. Looking at the side of the filter closest to the flash you could see a touch of buckling, and what I'd call heat damage. So for sure the filter has to be further away from the flash. I used an old diffuser, cut the head off, and taped the gel to that. Lot's of black duct tape around to keep it in place and a touch of curl to the gel. This is going to cut down on the light output, but if you place the gel right up against the flash I don't think it will be useful for very long. You've got to give the heat that's collected by not emitting visible light a place to bounce around and disipate between the gel and the flash unit.

I also decided to use the Bessa R2A as my infrared camera -- I was getting some peculiar effects with the M3 where one half of the frame would seem to have a motion blur and the left side was perfectly fine. Maybe this happened once or twice on each roll. I suspect the Bessa will be better and of course has a higher sync speed - not that that matters for dark stuff.

Anyway - only thing with the Bessa is that the little plastic window on the back showing what film is in the camera had to be taped over.

Now I'm waiting for it to get dark outside so I can do some stuff in the apartment.

Secret Garden, IR

infrared flash

I'm cobbling together an infrared flash. There are a lot of ways to do this, but after shooting in the bat house and some other glass enclosed areas in the zoo - I can see that for sure you need to boost the infrared light levels. The basic technique is to put infrared #87 gel over the flash. Weegee from what I've read used flash bulbs that were coated to absorb everything but infrared light. I've also been studying the infrared shots of Minor White (which are wonderful). What I'm seeing is that you want to minimize as much as possible the elements in the image to somewhat known IR entities. A good example is a shot of Poplar Trees, New York State. Maybe that's true for any shot, I don't know.

The flash should be ready tomorrow. I guess Buddy will be my first subject. He works for scale.

By Polar Bear

Central Park Zoo (infrared)

Tucan

Tucan, Rain Forest, Central Park Zoo (infrared)

Central Park Reservoir

This began as another palindrome but I decided to just leave a slight trace of the reversed skyline.

Car Reflection

Car Reflection

Visual Palindromes

Taxi!!!





Something Happened



Woman with Dog

These are from a visual palindrome series I've been toying with.

Central Park, Towards 110th Street

First Mac Virus?

Welcome to our world.

Here's the first article I ever read about a Mac virus. Macs are moving or have moved to the intel chip. The question I have is how difficult would it be for virus makers to port their code to the new OS.

Tech Notes

I thought I'd just jot down a couple of things about the infrared photography that intrigue me:

THE RIG

Same old M3 usually with the 35mm or 28mm lens stopped down. Light red filter (#25). Kodak HIE film. The Leica lens doesn't have infrared marking for focus, though that could be easily determined with a couple of tests and a little bit of tape or something on the lens to mark the spot. So far I haven't worried about the focus shift because I've been shooting with wide angle lenses and I'm usually at F8 or F11. The film is developed in Ilfotec DD-X with the same times I use for Tri-x (- 30 seconds). I load and unload the film in a changing bag which I bring with me. It's a pretty crappy one which I bought from Adorama. Somewhere in the house I have a good one which I once used for loading large format holders but I can't seem to find it.

Meter readings are with the Gossen Luna Pro. If I'm shooting in sunlight it's set to 100 ASA. If I am going to bracket - I'll do one at what the meter reads and one a stop more open.

For street and urban shots that were printed in the darkroom, this film would be difficult to use. There may be numerous blown out areas that might be important to the shot. But with Photoshop (using things like multiply layers, gradient masks etc.) if the effect has gone too far - it can usually be tamed. Jim S. mentioned this to me. I've been doing applying various correction layers since the first test roll. The man in the spiral is an example where I used a multiply layer and a gradient map. Without that the entire shot is blown out.

The shot below this - towards 110th street has been dodged and burned in a way that I couldn't do in the traditional darkroom without resorting to film masking techniques that were once used to adjust contrast in color prints.

THE IMAGINATION

I find that just trying to think in infrared gives my imagination a jolt that it needs. Brain is going: how is this going to show up. Where are the lines? In other words, all the things you should be doing normally - get a bit of a push.

Black and white is already an abstraction and gives you a chance to accentuate the design elements. With infrared the design of the shot can become more minimal. For me - there is a similarity to city snow shots, or night shots - where all of a sudden the crap of the city becomes invisible, the trees and roads and rivers are simplified to a few lines.

There are a few avenues I'm interested in exploring: shooting with tungsten light for example where my tests actually show a higher ASA for the film. I had one crazy idea - using an infrared flash in a movie theater to do audience reactions. Don't know if I'll get to that but I've not seen it done before for pictorial purposes. I think a horror film would be best.

And now I realize I'm procrastinating getting to some matting and packaging by writing this so I'd better get on with it.

Even More IR

Woman in Garden, Central Park




Sitting in Sun (Schurz Park)

I'm still in IR mode. I might be there for a while. More to follow...

Energy Caeser

I've decided to apply for the new post of Energy Caeser. My major plank is going to be that gas prices in our empire should be controlled so that they are steady - and most importantly as high as gas prices in Europe. My theory is that this is the best way to encourage alternative sources of energy and will force what are already global car manufacturing companies to sell the cars they sell in Europe to America.

True - these cars don't have room for DVD players, or even cup holders - but we are an adaptive people and will learn to hang our coffee from flasks around our necks if we need to. And don't forget - we invented miniature golf!

Now my campaign advisor believes this is idiotic because the car is the American symbol and has roots going back to the cowboy era. Americans want big, fast and powerful machines that say who they are. Not these cracker boxes.

Oh that's good. He's just arrived with a flak jacket for my first news conference. It has a couple of holes in it. He says he got it at Walmart. No - don't worry, he says. The holes are from the last politician that took this stance.

Who was that, I ask?

Someone you never heard of, he says smiling. But if you look beneath the Meadowlands you might find him.

More IR

I went up to the formal gardens in north central park with my changing bag and a roll of IR in the M3 with a particular place in mind to shoot. It was overcast with bits of sun coming through so I don't know if I'll get the same dramatic effects as when I was shooting in bright sunlight.

But the garden was being setup for a big fund raiser tomorrow and there were ugly white tents everywhere and you couldn't do much without getting a gardener in the shot.

So I headed up to the lake area and did a little rock climbing to get a good view of 110th street. Came home and started printing the last batch of IR shots.

Man - I like the look a lot. If you're in the anti-grain camp - you might not like it since the grain is about like tri-x pushed one, maybe two stops. But to me that just adds to the pictorial impression. The willow trees shots and the guy in the rowboat are filled with detail that you - oh you know - you can't see it on the web which has been annoying since the beginning of web picture time. But the prints are very satisfying (considering my own difficulties with pure nature shooting). To me - it seems as if the infrared accentuates some forms and minimizes others so that if you do it right - you can amplify the design elements of the shot.

IR

I think before I go out and shoot my last two rolls of IR film I'll start printing some of the better shots. The look still intrigues me.

As an aside - I did a little bit of research into digital IR. With the right camera (probably the high end Sony - I forget the model but it has night mode) it is straightfoward. Digicams (as opposed to Digital SLRs) have a filter to cut out infrared light in front of the sensor. The funny thing is that my old Canon A75 does a poor job of cutting out IR light. If you point it at the IR light emited by say a remote control - it shows up as white on the LCD.

This is in no way a good solution since what you really want is to remove the IR filter, and believe it or not there are lots of articles on the web about how to do that yourself. There is also a guy that will do it for you for a couple hundred bucks and put in the filter you want instead.

I looked at a lot of digital infrared stuff over the last few weeks. It isn't the same as film (I don't think) because of the lack of a anti-halation layer on the Kodak film which causes all sorts of glows and whatnot as light bounces around and makes its way back through the film. But in this arena - digital looks easier. Again - with the right camera.

Again - the A75 is not what you really want since you will want to do this in RAW mode. But just for fun - if I have nothing better to do I might open the gizmo up and see how hard it is to remove the filter.

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I found an excellent summary of shooting with film IR here by David Romano.

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