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.