"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.