Seraphemera II - Breathe Deep the Gathering Gloom #9

"I saw an angel in the marble and carved until I set it free." -- Michaelangelo

Totemism - Breathe Deep the Gathering Gloom #8

"The origin of totems is the most difficult and complex of the problems posed by totemism. Though distinguished scholars all over the world have advanced the most diverse views on this question, no satisfying solution has yet been offered. " -- He Xingliang

Breathe Deep the Gathering Gloom #7

"One need not be a chamber to be haunted;
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place."       ~Emily Dickinson

I have fallen behind on my goal of the 12 Days of Halloween, but the best of this series is yet to come. I love the combination of high-speed film, blocky grain and atmospheric lighting.  

Breathe Deep the Gathering Gloom #6

On my personal Facebook page, I posted a goofy photo of myself wearing Bubby or Hillbilly teeth. I received the usual yuks and yaks. One friend, however, posted, "Been worried about you lately..." I guess this series makes me seem gothically depressed.  

Not really. I like photographically exploring things. I have a distrust of what I call "happy pictures." Nothing wrong with them, but most of them simply aren't interesting to me. I admire the hell out of Sally Mann's "What Remains," as well as the work of Joel Peter Witkin. You have to "want" to look at some of those photographs. Which is probably the point. 

I like this particular shot because it demonstrates one of my recurring approaches: to photograph a piece of something larger, to take it out of its larger context, and to make it something that stands alone from the whole. Sort of like me. 

All Hallow's Eve approaches...

Breathe Deep the Gathering Gloom #5

I am re-posting this photo from earlier this year because it fits so nicely into Breathe Deep the Gathering Gloom.

If I believed in ghosts (I am an agnostic on this particular matter), I would say that this image captured some sort of activity or energy associated with these roadside memorials. The first image I made of this scene is below. Just a few seconds later, I captured the one above. Same camera (my trusty Holga 120S). Same scene. Same light. Dramatically different. Gotta love toy camera photography.  

My sons tried several times over the years to get me to sit with them and watch those ghost hunter shows. Not really my thing. And as the image above suggests, maybe you don't need all those sensitive electronics to detect paranormal activity. If ghosts had a sense of humor (and I hear some do), then they probably would present themselves only through the humble lo-fi Holga -- what I have dubbed The Parahogal.

Breathe Deep the Gathering Gloom #4

One of the things I have noticed about cemeteries relates to something that is true in life. In an aging cemetery such as this one, the bigger and grander the monument, the more upkeep that is required to maintain it, or how it crumbles and falls with the greatest effect. The simpler and smaller the grave marker, the better it survives.

I will probably offend some for this comment, but I do not understand the need for people to be memorialized in this way. I think the "eternal flame" at JFK's monument is an obscene use of resources. During the time it is alight, now many homes could be heated? He should be remembered, but not by a flame that will not be eternal (what hubris to think so). His accomplishments should be more than enough to honor his life.

None of this has anything to do directly with today's image. It served merely as a prompt for my musings...

Breathe Deep the Gathering Gloom #3

Shooting toy cameras with film yields consistently inconsistent results. That's why I love the process. As I have been shooting more cemeteries and roadside memorials in recent months, I have noticed an increase in light leaks, weird exposures and other effects -- all occurring throughout my collection of cameras. And believe me, this one pales in comparison to some that will later as we get to Halloween.

Don't really know what this means. But if the energy (or whatever you call it) of someone's life could manifest itself, wouldn't it be great if it did so through lo-fi means?

Breathe Deep the Gathering Gloom, Day 2

Today is Day II of the slowly decomposing series I'm calling Beware the Gathering Gloom. I was a bit conflicted about whether to include Jesus in this series. Not sure he was a Gloomy Gus. But the tone and timbre of this photo fits, so it's in.

I returned to this cemetery looking for a particular headstone that I saw online. I found it right away, but the light was not what I wanted. As I get to know this place (I just found out I have relatives buried there), I have become re-aware of one of my own approaches to photography: slow down. Instead of driving around, hoping something caught m eye, I started walking around aimlessly. And better things presented themselves. This shot is a case in point. From pretty far away, this headstone seemed to beckon me. And not just this headstone, but this one relatively small part of it.

This shot was a bit of an experiment. I'm not too proud to say that money is a bit tight right now, especially as I've been printing and framing work for some upcoming shows. It ain't cheap. I have neither he funds nor the time to send off some film, so I shot this on my Nikon DSLR with a Holga lens. I bought this lens January at the brick and mortar Freestyle Photography store in Los Angeles but have not taken more than a couple of test shots. It's a bit tricky to use. But I like this result. I like the hint of sunlight on the upper left side. It's what makes this unusual. I also like the how it is Shroud of Turin-ish.

Beware the Gathering Gloom: Day 1 of the 12 Days of Halloween

For some reason, I'm into Halloween this year. Maybe it's the 13 in 2013. Who knows, I'm just going with it. Today marks Day 1 of this short series, I borrowed a line from the Moody Blues: Beware the Gathering Gloom. This will be progressively a progressively darker series of photographs, all taken within the past two or three weeks.

QWERKY: The Great Pumpkin

To quote Linus from the Peanuts cartoon, :I've learned there are three things you don't discuss with people: religion, politics and the Great Pumpkin."

After shooting so many photographs in the past few years using toy cameras with limited or no focus or exposure controls, I rediscovered the joy of shooting with my trusty Nikon F2 Photomic and go-to 85mm portrait lens. I was using great equipment, but mixed things up by cross processing slide film.  

And, just like locavores who try to eat seasonally, I am trying to shoot seasonally. I guess that makes me a shootavore. Hence, expect lots of fallish work from me for the next few weeks.

QWERKY PHOTO BLOG: The Dark Months Begin

I am saving my best new shots for my upcoming Breathe Deep the Gathering Gloom: 12 Days of Halloween. I offer this shot because it was taken with my "new" vintage Rocket Camera. The first roll I took was not developed properly [thanks Ilford Lab : ( ]. This roll, with Tri-X pushed to 1600 turned out pretty good. I love the way this camera renders light. I will spend much more time with this camera in the coming months. P.S. I like the proportions, too, as well as the light leaks.

Weeds of a Different Nature

This is all about proximity:

• The proximity between driving on and stopping
  
• The proximity to the road - one step out of the car
• The proximity of these weeds to the "domesticated" corn
• The proximity between the cultivated and the wild
  

Still Life On Countertop

This was not a composed shot. I was trying to finish off the roll and just snapped a couple without aiming. My Leica is a very fussy camera to load and I was afraid the leader had not caught. Pure serendipity, but perhaps a little embarrassing to show how messy the kitchen can get... From a roll that the lab neglected to push process. I was barely able to pull a couple of barely acceptable images. The dark side of shooting film...

QWERKY PHOTO BLOG: A Cage Relic Rumination

In his elegaic book The Disappearance of Darkness, Photography At the End of the Analog Era, Robert Burley writes, "Photography as an art form has always been dependent for its existence on the availability of film itself, as surely as painters have depended on the availability of canvas and tubes of paint...It is ironic to think that just as film has finally been freed from its mundane applications in the everyday world to be explored as an artist's material, it could very easily disappear altogether..."

I thought of this quote yesterday as I rummaged through the glove box in my car. Underneath the tissues, cassette tape adapter for my stereo, and granola bars, I found two rolls of 120 film. I like to "cook" a roll of two in there just to add a bit more unpredictability to photographic endeavors. One roll was GP3 100 and this roll of Bergger BRF-200. It's been in there for three years. I immediately regretted cooking the Bergger because it is my last roll of this now-discontinued film. I didn't know when I put it in the glove box. When I first began working with Holga cameras, Bergger was one of the first films I purchased, in part because the description spoke of its blocky, old-fashioned grain.

I'm a sucker for that kind of grain. And I made what I consider some damn good photos using this French film.  But this last roll made me melancholic, nostalgic even. Across the Internet are rosters of film that is no longer manufactured. Film is not dead, but the choices are dwindling. RIP is a common refrain.

Like someone who finds an expired roll of something at a tag sale, I am faced with what to do with my last roll of Bergger (I am hopeful of scoring at least a few more on eBay, but have been unsuccessful thus far (this film just fell off the face of the Earth)). 

I want to honor this roll of film in some way. I suppose I could keep it, but I feel about it the same way I feel about my vintage cameras. They are meant to be used, not ogled. Film was meant to be exposed, processed, and developed into photographs. To do otherwise would be to disrupt its destiny.

This leads to the next question: What to photograph? This is a sublime ache. I once wrote a poem called "That Last Apple." It was based on an essay titled "A Multiplicity of Apples" by Edward Behr in his recently reissued book The Artful Eater. I won't bore you with my poem, but it was inspired by the first sentence, "Possibly, the best apple I ever ate was a Wealthy that I picked one cool, sunny September day some years ago from the last living branch of an old tree in an abandoned farm orchard."

Behr savored that apple the way I now contemplate savoring this roll of Bergger film -  from the tactile to the emotional. The term "cage relic" from the title has been appropriated by the video gaming world, but its original meaning was to give a name to the last living example of an almost extinct species. The last-of-its-kind animal, sitting in a cage, was the last gasp before the end of the line. 

My roll of Bergger film may not truly be a cage relic. Who knows when the last roll of this brand of film will be shot. But it is my cage relic. I look at it through the bars of is obsolescence and ponder its fate. What light will I ask it to render?

As Behr writes, "Yet the deep roots of the dying tree may have concentrated an exceptional store of energy into the final display of fruit (the tree was dead the next year)...so often one is distracted and doesn't really taste things. And, of course, things remembered are almost always better."

Not to put too fine a point on this, but I insist on really tasting (remembering, honoring) this roll of film. I want to be able to point at twelve images made with a Holga or one of my other cameras, and say, "This was my last roll of Bergger."

As my indecision remains, so does this roll of film. A cage relic in my film drawer.

QWERKY PHOTO BLOG: Whether Board?

I was recently walking through a home improvement store and a guy standing at a folding table thrust a pamphlet toward me and exclaimed, "I would like to talk to you about the advantages of vinyl siding." 

"No thanks," I replied. "I live in an historic home." 

So much is said these days about "authenticity." I'm not exactly sure how to define authenticity, but, like porn, I know it when I see it. I know of homes of a similar age around here, and some have succumbed to the allure of "maintenance free" vinyl siding. I'm convinced that in the long view nothing is truly maintenance free. And no matter how high the quality of vinyl siding, I have never seen it look right on an historic home. Not saying it can't be done, but just saying I haven't seen it.

I was watching the local news the other day and they showed modern home that had caught fire. As the reporter interviewed the owner, I could see the remains of the house in the background. "How sad," I thought. "Their house melted." 

At least mine, if it ever goes, will go in a blaze of glory.

Qwerky Photo Blog: "The Burden of the Past..."

I have been delaying writing about this image.  I wasn't even sure I ever would. I was pleased enough with how it turned out, though it appears somewhat artificial, Photoshopped even. There's that, and last week I stumbled across a book by Lisa Mahar-Keplinger titled Grain Elevators. It's a beautiful book filled with beautiful photographs of these cathedral-like structures. Mine pales in comparison.

No reason to write about it, but then I was reading an article titled "Meet the Keatles" by David Gessner in the most recent issue of The Oxford American. He was writing about the similar trajectories followed by the two Johns (no, not Updike and Cheever) - Keats and Lennon. Gessner refereneces a book by Walter Jackson Bate titled The Burden of the Past and the English Poet. 

"The problem of how to create original work while looking back at such a rich legacy of things already done, is particularly acute in modern times, exacerbated by our emphasis on being original," Gessner writes. Often the answer for the artist is to retreat into a small fiefdom, a sub-genre, and refine and develop that small plot, tending one particular strand of roses."

I will speak only for myself as a toy camera photographer. Am I cowed by the "rich legacy" of photography's big names? Have I retreated into a "small fiefdom" inhabited by analog film and plastic cameras as a way to combat the overwhelming amount of great photography already accomplished? Is my work only sloppy seconds of been-there-done-that?

Contemplating these questions made me seriously doubt why I work in this endeavor. Fortunately, Gessner quoting Bate, offers "'None of us, as Goethe says, is very 'original" anyway; one gets most of what he attains in his short life from others.'" To which Gesser adds, "Why should literature or music be so different than other human endeavors - sports, say, or carpentry - where we naturally learn from those who came before? Isn't it always through others that we begin to define and become ourselves?"

I would add "photography" to literature and music, then answer that question with a definitive yes. Now I'm going to my local camera store and make a film "buy." Oh, and I ordered a hardback copy of The Burden of the Past..." from Abe Books.

Summer Essence

As a dedicated shooter, I have amassed an overwhelming number of digital files that I am just now beginning to organize properly. I suspect it will take me at least a year to get a basic organization complete using Lightroom, which I just purchased. 

In addition to the satisfaction of achieving some level organization, the only thing I am looking forward to is discovering "forgotten" images. This photograph was taken about 10 years ago when my youngest son attended his first week-long Cub Scout camp. This was also the first summer I began shooting with a Holga. 

I share this shot not because of its technical features or composition, but because it is an example of one of those rare shots that convey the essence of something, without being specific. To me at least, this quietly says "summer camp." 

Into The Great Wide Open

Samuel Goldwyn once quipped that a wide screen just makes a bad film twice as bad. I hope that is not the case with this panoramic series Feeling Archy. Strange behavior is a relative thing. I laid on the ground and shot this looking up. No one paid me any mind. If I did the same thing on a city street, I think I might receive some stares, at the least.  

True confession: I'm learning to use Lightroom and enhanced the vingnetting on this shot. I typically do everything in camera, but this effect kind of saved this image. So sue me. 

Thanks to Tom Petty for the title, "Into the great wide open/under them skies of blue." 

I'm Not A Tourist In My Own Town

Photo editing is a lot like writing editing. Sometimes, you see things better after you have put them away for a while. I glossed over this shot from my Feeling Archy series. Tonight, as I prepare to power down, I like this shot. Tomorrow morning, I may take it down. That's my definition of Self Editing.

It's Close

Don't know what it is, but it's close.