"(and) did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?"

Exp: 28mm f/11 - 1/500 ... ish?

Film: Fuji Neopan 400 iso

File: 4-6

Print: Dodge burn 30sec +- 15 seconds (grade 4 matte)

The meta-information I usually provide is a bit different this time. I don't recall and didn't record my f/stop and exposure times, but judging by the depth of field and my memory of the lighting conditions, it looks to be f/11, which would have put this at around 1/500th, plus or minus a stop. It was a bright day and the "sunny 16" rule would have held. This rule of thumb says that at f/16 (which is only a couple of stops away from being a pinhole camera) on a sunny day, your shutter speed should be the reciprocal of the iso. I rarely use f/16 or higher because of a lack of sharpness at higher f stops (diffraction is to blame here, otherwise we'd use pinhole cameras), and an iso of 400 would mean 1/500th or 1/1000 would work for this exposure.

The negative had a very strong contrast between the top and bottom of this print, as the sunlight was very bright against the white surface. As a result I decided to use a gradient exposure on the print under the enlarger to darken the base and lighten the top. I did this by setting the timer for 45 seconds, covering the print, and slowly uncovering the print from the bottom up until there were only 20 seconds left to expose the top. Without doing this either the top is too dark, or the bottom is too light. I also played with some of the lighting in this print with iphoto, and had to uncrop the easeling my scanner tried to get rid of with Gimp - a free variant of Photoshop. Gimp can have a steep learning curve, so I tend to do some simple things in iPhoto for sanity.

The original negative is from a pre-baby trip we took to the National Law Enforcement Officer's Memorial in DC this summer. This memorial isn't as popular as it should be; I think most people don't really know it exists until a name they know is etched into the wall there. On the left of the print you can see some names of US law enforcement killed in the line of duty. It's a bit like the Vietnam memorial, except that the names are on a soft white surface instead of a glossy black one. One of the design ideas behind the Vietnam memorial was to reflect visitor's images in the names; I heard somewhere it was to get people to realize that someone just like them is in every name. Anyway I think it's a shame that visitors are more likely to visit statues of ghosts, rather than pay homage to heroes like these.

Another photo from the same roll of film appeared a while ago on this blog, "How they lived." I just looked back on that post, and I feel like I'm making progress. I hope I can say the same thing in another 6 months.

Also, here is a sample of some work I did as a pilot in commercial photography. I haven't figured out what I would charge for this kind of "everyday" work yet, but email me if you're interested. I'm likely more reasonable than most "professionals." If the lens flare in this picture isn't your style (I like it!) see the alternative picture further down, that might be more your speed.

The other bonus is that I license digital images under Creative Commons na 2.5, which means that unlike most cruel photographers who stamp your images with idiotic copyright watermarks and force your friends and family to pay for prints, you can share my digitals and print as many copies as you like. I mean, you already paid for the photographer to take the pictures, why do so many of these jerks try to squeeze a few extra dimes out of your friends and family? Again, all of my digitals for all time will be under this license, unless I explicitly state otherwise.

Anyway here's one more from the shoot. I made a special print of it for them in which I brought out more detail of the snow behind them. If you visit the Richart's, maybe you'll see it in their foyer!

This is the single frame I managed to capture of a baby smiling with it's parents. No easy feat, let me tell you.

"Hot ashes for trees"

Exp: 28mm @ f/2.8 - 1/60th

Film: Kodak TMax 400

File: 7-2

At: 1/1m

On: RC Ilford Warm Tone 8x10

This is a photograph of a sculpture which contains some of my dad's ashes - printed on trees - aka warm tone paper. The title and composition are a mix of metaphorical and literal interpretation. I decided one day in September that I wanted this picture and when we happened to visit my mom I got it in one exposure. I visualized the light from the middle of the metallic reflection on zone V, which gave the dolphins nice contrast with the darker base.

One of several of prints of this negatives is above my son's crib - which is what I wanted it for. His namesake is someone he'll never meet, but my dad is someone we'll make sure he knows. This picture is there more to remind us of that; he's just a baby!

I made a lot of "work" prints to get this just right, and I finally achieved the desired effect with "warm tone" paper. It was the first time I used warm and cool tone paper - which changes contrast and exposure time by about a stop. Warm tone paper is a full stop slower than the regular multigrade paper, so a "strait" print would have been 30sec, and a cool tone print took only 15 seconds.

"Hot air for a cool breeze"

Exp: 50mm @ f/4 - 1/500th

Film: Ilford Delta 100

File: 8-31

At: -/ 55

On: RC Ilford Grade 4 pearl (matte) 8x10

This is a picture of Great Falls park in Maryland from earlier in the fall. Claire and I decided to go for a hike there on her due date. Little did we know it was going to be another 12 days before our little guy came.

Anyway I really liked the symmetry of this composition, and the brightness of the sky and water almost makes it look orthochromatic. After I printed this I went out and got a #25 and #58 wratten number filters by Tiffen, these are red and green filters respectively. They pull down the overexposed sky for cloud details and mess with contrast and different tones - in the case of #58, foliage can be drastically affected.

I learned from reading my books on Ansel Adams that when photography was still immature, it was common for photographers to use a second negative with clouds on it to add to pictures like this. Apparently people just didn't notice that the same clouds seemed to follow these photographers wherever they went!

"Cold comfort for change"

Exp: 50mm @ f/8 - 1/250th

Film: Ilford Delta 400

File: 11-12

At: -/ 1.30

On: RC Ilford Grade 4 pearl (matte) 8x10

They say that it is the job of any artist to to document their place in history, which is what I had in my head when I decided I wanted this picture. This was the first of these I've seen in our neighborhood in a long time, and I was intrigued by this story. How much did they have to concede in order to sell? They obviously were happy at this house, who puts a statue and a plant out if they aren't? We're happy where we are right now, so like most people, we feel like it would be crazy to move, and give up so much potential future equity while the market is only just recovering. And recovering it is, slowly but surely if this photo is any evidence. But people will always desire to move ahead and forward, even if it means giving up that which was familiar and comforting.

As I go it's becoming easier to visualize what kind of a picture I want, and get it on a negative with one or two exposures. This was my goal all along with film photography, and I'm still finding that the added expense of film doesn't justify a much more expensive digital camera.

It took me a while to get to making this print, even though I've had the negative for a while because I took some extra time to construct a light trap for our bathroom (my darkroom) door. This is just a frame with handles on it that fits around the door. It's covered in a special black-out cloth to keep out the light. This worked great, except for one unexpected side effect. When you set up a trap like this, it also makes a pneumatic seal around the door. When I fired up the bathroom fan for ventilation, there was enough negative air pressure to cause the frame to fall inward, on me.

"(and) Did you exchange..."

Exp: 50mm + 17 diopter @ f/1.8 - 1/8th
Film: Kodak Tmax 400
File: 9-6
At: - / 40
On: Resin Coated Grade 4 pearl (matte) 8x10

Exp: 50mm @ f/4 - 1/125th
Film: Ilford Delta 3200
File: 10-5
At: 1 / 50

On: Resin Coated Grade 4 Glossy 8x10

Since the birth of my son, I haven't had a chance to do much with photography other than do a little reading and try some experiments. The first print with today's title "(and) did you exchange" is an enormous enlargement of a dime using a 5$ set of diopter magnification filters I bought a couple of weeks ago. They fit both of my 52mm diameter lenses, and should provide lots of fun possibilities. I used the +4 for the feet picture on our family blog - teamsax.blogspot.com. They are split into 4 lenses, 10, 4, 2 and 1, and are additive- I used them all for this picture. 

The exchange made here is not only monetary, but also I've exchanged magnification for depth of field. Being a few degrees off of perpendicular means that the top and bottom of the coin would not be in focus. I didn't have enough light to stop down any further without my hand vibration blurring the picture, and by getting close I imposed quite a shadow on the subject. Photography is often about exchanging one variable for another.

I couldn't get away with not putting a picture of my new baby boy up too, and I'm proud to display the first print I've made of little Karl - the fourth Sax to bear the name in the last century. The exchange here is in reference to the pictured care provider on the day of his birth. We exchanged a hospital birth for a home one, an OB for a midwife, and medical interventions for the Bradley method. It is rare in our society to encounter such a value, for 3k$ we had a team of them standing by with us at every contraction, checking to make sure we were safe and guiding us along the way throughout the night and most of the 21 hours of active labor.

Without these wonderful people, and our commitment to our own success, I am certain that Karl's birth would have ended in a cesarean section. Instead, we got a *very* healthy little boy, and my wonderful wife is sitting beside me with a *much* easier recovery than she would have had otherwise. The only downside is that our insurance did not cover this wonderful experience. Where a hospital vaginal delivery would have cost 6k$, and the inevitable c-section would have cost 12k$ (and put Claire at risk for MRSA, among other things) the insurance company fails to realize the enormous savings that would result if they did not deny this coverage, and allowed more women to choose a midwife. This is why we need health care reform, and why we shouldn't be so fearful of how our society might "pay" for it. Often, a doctor knows best, and acts in the best interest of the safety of their patients, but in some situations, such as birth, they are acting on the needs of a society more concerned with litigation and convenience than on sound medicine.

With health care reform, we just might save money, and lives.

"A walk on part in the war"

Exp: 50mm - f/4 - 1/60th

Film: ilford delta 100

File: 8 - 30

At: -/55

We ran into this blue heron while on a walk in Great Falls Maryland. It's important to the title to understand that this bird is hunting, as part of a constant fight for it's survival. We were able to be within feet of it because we are so insignificant to this fight. In this case my part was the walk on role.

I have a few other nice negatives and prints from this trip that may show up later on in this series as well.

Edit: This picture looks much nicer if you click on it and view it at full resolution. 600dpi doesn't do it justice, but that's a huge improvement over the small picture shown in the body of the post.

"(for a) Lead role in a cage"

Exp: 28mm - f4 - 1/15

Film: Kodak Tmax 400

File: 7-19

At: - / 30

I've decided that any additional writing in the posts of this project won't compromise my artistic vision. Some people have been thrown off by this project, so I'll reiterate that I am composing an image with a title that happens to belong to each lyric of the song "Wish you were here" by Pink Floyd. As each piece is an individual work that I own, this is a clear cut case of fair use. It's a good way to keep me thinking about my new hobby, and my way of taking back some of our culture from big music labels.

Well, I obviously sort of floundered with this lyric (its been over a month); it was hard to come up with a composition that wasn't too obvious. In order to keep myself moving I'm going to try to commit to making a print to post for every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. This may be hard in the next few weeks as we have a baby due.

Also, I've been doing a lot of reading - Ansel Adams' series "the camera", "the negative", and "the print." It's a different experience than textbooks in school. Maybe it's the more directed learning experience, learning something you actually want to learn makes every page a revelation, instead of a chore. I wanted to get through more of these books before I made more prints.

I got a new lens, a 50mm f1.8 series E nikon that's probably older than me. Fantastic quality for an insanely low price, and it's a good companion to my 28mm f2.8 series E. I'll include which lens and maybe fstop and exposure information with my prints ( if I remember or write it down) along with the information I already post: File: negative page- frame number, At: filter-print exposure time.

"How I Wish, How I Wish You Were Here"

File: 5-8 At: -/12

"We're Just Two Lost Souls"

File: iii-27 At: 1/1.00

"Swimmin in a Fish Bowl"

File: ii-20 At: 3/1.45

"Year After Year"

File: 6-24 At: -/14

"Running Over the Same Old Ground"

File: 5 -6 At: -/17

"What have we found?"

File: 6-18 At: -/12

"The Same Old Fears"

File: 6-13 At: -/15

"Wish you were here"

File: 5-22 At: -/15

Fair Use

One of the themes I often return to when I decide on projects is to point out the ridiculousness of modern copyright laws.  Maybe I don't think that the general idea of copyright is that ridiculous, but modern applications of it certainly are. Today I hit upon a fun project which would allow me to duplicate a popular work under copyright, while staying within a very clear definition of fair use. Fair use is defined here, with the following criteria:

“quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author’s observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson; reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; incidental and fortuitous reproduction, in a newsreel or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of an event being reported.”

Several interesting points to make here. One, this quotation could be copyrighted, except that it's origin appears to be the US government, and a government cannot produce works protected under intellectual property law. Here's the really interesting part though:

"The distinction between fair use and infringement may be unclear and not easily defined. There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission."

What if I were to produce a tangential work using a different medium and title my series with the sequential lyrics of a popular song. I think we can all agree that the use of a single song lyric would be fair use, but what if I used them all, each for a different piece? It's easy to argue this is also fair use, as long as each piece stands on it's own. 

My project started this weekend, and with any luck I'll develop this roll of film and post my first print tonight. The series as a whole is called "Wish you were here." 

It might take me a while to get through this. As in weeks. I'll write a bookend post when I'm done with the series, and until then each print will be without the usual jibber jabber.

"Ceiling Fan"

Tonight's print is a 5x7 cropping from some experimenting.

I got a box 'o stuff from a guy that used to be a darkroom geek, and one item tucked away with the easels and chemicals (and radioactive antistatic brush! WTF should I do to dispose of that!?) was a roll of film that expired almost 10 years ago. I learned through experimentation that film looses sensitivity after it expires, and in this case my roll of 400 was probably more like a roll of 100 or 50 ISO speed film.

I happened to experiment with camera tossing (yes, it's a thing) with that roll and exposed our ceiling fan for 4 seconds at f/22 and got this gem. I cropped out some of the composition because there was a bit of extra darkness and I wanted to focus on the light streaks more. A full 8x10 of the more of the negative would probably look great though - maybe with a bit longer print exposure time (30+ sec!).

Tonight's project was more about screwing around in the darkroom than anything else. I also wanted to make a nice print of the "photography not permitted" picture for display on the wall in my darkroom. This kind of thematic effort seemed somewhat masturbatory, but I felt the need to "eat my own dog food" as they say. They do say that, right?

See?

This looks like crap.

Stripping

I spent the day stripping this chest of drawers of paint. The resulting finish was pretty gnarly, and I'd love to keep it like this, but Claire won't let me. It's ok with me though; it would probably give our gestational bundle nightmares - and I'd spend all my money on shrinks.

I had hoped that I'd be able to use it as part of a black&white composition, but when I noticed it had several paint colors I decided it made more sense to make a color digital photo with my point'n shoot.

This color photo also brings a bit of contrast to the otherwise monochrome pictures I post here. I think this is artistically legitimate - while the corollary is not. I do not think it is artistically valid to use the "black and white" programmatic effect to "artify" color digitals. I'm looking at you, headshot photographers. I am not without sin in this respect. I'll admit that I've done it. I did it because I needed to boost the contrast of a composition I wasn't happy with. I should have just discarded the file, and I weep whenever I think about it... well, not really, but I feel really dumb.

If you find yourself doing this, step back and ask "how retarded is this?" I'll tell you, it's pretty retarded. It's not pushing the limits - which should at least partially be a motivating factor in any artistic endeavor.

Black and white chemistry photography is a different matter. There is meat on the bone to be had with processing film and using an enlarger. No print is the same, unless you want them to be. Tonight I hope to have some time to spend on more printmaking. The end result will be a 4d photo - I tripped the shutter for 4 seconds and flung my camera through the air. Oh, and I used 400 speed Kodak TriX that had been in some guy's basement since the Clinton administration.

Adorable

The last time I posted I included a riddle: why are those two prints so different? The big clue was that the lighter one is 8x10, and the dark one was 4x5. Imagine that you're holding a flashlight - when you get closer to an object it will have more illumination. The act of enlarging requires you move the "projector" or "enlarger" further away from the print. If you double the size, you're going a whole stop down. When you add light to a negative - you get a lighter print, and when you add light to the print, you get a darker print.

Tonight's portfolio additions all have the same title - as they should each may you think of the word 'adorable'

Charlie's white coat demands a dark environment for contrast. I've increased the contrast in this picture by tracing his image, cutting it out, and covering him up to overexpose the background. I taped the cut out onto a piece of glass to ensure I could correctly place it between exposures.

My niece. Always cute.

My mother-in-law - who would hate that I posted this picture because she is _very_ camera shy. I think she is adorable and wasted no effort in using guerrilla tactics to obtain an unguarded shot of her (very rare). You might notice she has a sort of glow; I used some darkroom tricks to darken the left side of the print where her car is parked, which left the background around her face a bit lighter.

For the photogs reading this, you might have noticed the portraits are on the right third, while I centered the dog for the added effect of making him look more diminutive.

Why do this?

There are a lot of reasons.

1. Cost- It would cost me somewhere between 1-2 thousand dollars to get a comparable digital camera. I bought my N90 off a co-worker for under 200. Each print costs me as little as 60 cents (although practically speaking it amounts to much more than that).
2. Curiosity- I've always wondered how the whole process worked, you see it in movies like "Ghostbusters" or "The Crush" and these characters just seem to be able to work in a darkroom like it's second nature.
3. Fun- Working in a darkroom is cathartic.
4. Weirdness- This hobby is a counterculture statement as much as anything.
5. Art-Last but not least. There is a great deal of creativity to be had not only in the composition of the moment, but the exposure, and the process of creating prints.

Digital photography has proven that the mass appeal of photography has only two aspects. Journalism and narcissism. In some respects, that's made it easier to zero in on the kind of artistic style I'm pursuing. It also means that it's difficult to explain to people who see me with a camera, and make assumptions about what I'm doing. They pose for pictures and express shock that it's a film camera. This is fun too. :)

Below is tonight's print, scanned in with my new scanner. Actually, I've made two prints of the same exposure to help bring out some of what you can do on the printing end. In this case, the darker photo is a 4x5 proof, while the lighter one is an 8x10 for my portfolio. They were made with the same enlarger, with the same chemicals, the same timings, from the same negative. So why are they so different? I'll post why in the next couple of days, along with more details about the location.

Enjoy, and as usual, let me know if you're interested in a signed framed print.

Canoscan!

The day after I printed the large brass lion in my previous post, I ordered a Canon Scanner for 55 bucks from Provantage.com. The very next day, today, My order arrived at around 9 am. They sent me an email confirmation of my order at 4:11 pm on Thursday, and delivered it at 9 am Friday. Crazy. So I busted out the new scanner and tried it out on my previously posted prints. Here's how they turned out.

I've decided that unless I state otherwise, all digital images on this site are hereby licensed under the creative commons 2 artistic license. If you're want to, you can print them out and display them or give them to whomever you like - although they'll probably think you're cheap for not buying a signed, framed print from a struggling artist. :) I'm not really worried about corporations profiting from my work, the scans are 600 dpi and there's dust on the scanner mixing with the imperfections in negatives and the prints themselves. And anyways the recognition would be just as valuable if they did.

"How they lived"

Ok, I think I'm going to give up on trying to take digitals of the prints while already framed.  Next time I'll try taking pictures of the prints in my portfolio notebook - that's where I'm going to put them anyways. 

Featured tonight is another print from our trip to DC last weekend. This digital copy of it really sucks. On the print you can see the words in the stone which say "It is not how these officers died that makes them heroes, but how they lived."

I need to start scanning these in.

Anyways, I also found some really cool modernistic black frames today, which look way better than the ruddy brown frame in my last post. 

Edit: While trying out the new black frames, I cut the hell out of my finger. So far - blood and sweat. Now all I need is tears and I'll have a trifecta. 

Cubs

As you can see, it's kind of challenging to capture a print with a crappy point and shoot. I'll try to always post two of each print to make up for it.

This picture was taken the same day as the title print "Photography Not Permitted". The National Building Museum is in the background, and this is one of many brass lion sculptures that make up the National Law Enforcement Officer's Memorial at Judiciary square. I highly recommend visiting the memorial. It's a similar experience to the Vietnam memorial; an unknown gem.

This exposure was with the same roll of 400 speed Neopan, at F/4 and 1/2000th shutter speed. It was a fairly bright day. If you're interested in this print, remind me that I used a 14 second exposure - which was perfect for the light in the negative.

Black and White

I intend to use this as a showcase for my photography work. I haven't yet worked out any of the details for the off chance anyone is interested in purchasing framed, signed prints, but for now just email me and we'll work it out. 

The main picture on this blog includes a print that I made this evening using my beseler condenser enlarger. The negative was a 35mm exposure taken with my Nikon N90, using a Nikor 2.8 lens. Unless I specify otherwise, this is the only hardware I have for now. I used Fuji Neopan 400, which I've been favoring lately. I made the exposure at the Philip Trager exhibit at the national building museum this weekend. 

You can also see in the digital picture some of my other darkroom bric-a-brak. Believe it or not, I did not have to do anything to compose this shot other than toss the completed print onto my workbench.  If there's any interest, I can do a post on the whole process.