Just A Quick Trip To Paradise ~

I tried to stick to my new year's resolution to attend to this blog every week, and immediately fell behind by two of them. But in my defense, the last two weeks included Christmas and New Year's, which should automatically trigger a vacation response in every North American. Me, especially, since I obviously work so darn hard...

So what's a guy to do, other than gather up an assortment of cameras and lenses and catch an early flight to Kona? It certainly sounded reasonable to me. I'd been to Hawaii many times: regular workshops and trade shows in Honolulu, and a photo trip to Kaua'i in 2013. But this was my first trip to the Big Island, and it was a joy and a revelation.
As far as gear goes, I really just travelled there with my Fuji Xe2 and the two lenses I own with it: the 18-55 f2.8-4, and the 10-24 f4. This is such an easy and lightweight system to carry around, and I'm getting more and more impressed with the precision and clarity of the optics. The images above and to the left were taken in the Tropical Botanic Gardens north of Hilo. The sun was bright and shiny, but the foliage so dense that I was shooting at an ISO of 800 and, at times, 1600. Truth be told, there's a bit of noise at 1600, but the new NR filter in Perfect Photo Suite 9 from onOne nails it down perfectly.

We stayed a couple of days down at the Kilauea volcano, and did a couple of hikes around there. (My wife calls them hikes; I likened them more to "death marches", but whatever). I never go anywhere without my iPhone 5s and took this shot of the crater, visible from the Jagger Museum, in HDR mode. Some editing in Snapseed, and finished up with some onOne filters, too.

There was plenty of snorkeling, swimming, and hanging out on the beaches around Kona, to be sure.  I saw this gorgeous tortoise swimming in the shallows at Pu'uhonoa, near Kona, and posted it to Facebook directly from my iPhone, but I've done a little extra work on it since then to bring out the incredible color and iridescence of the water.
We have a couple more trips planned this year; a trans-Canada adventure with a few days in Montreal, and hopefully the Albuquerque Balloon festival in the fall. Oh the things I'll do and the places I'll go just to make an interesting blog post. Honestly.
But Hawaii draws me back every year. There's a lot of pictures there I haven't taken yet.
And I ain't getting any younger.

Trying To Catch A Storm ~

Well, there we were again, out on the Oregon coast, seeing if we could catch a little storm action to photograph. You'd think we'd get plenty of opportunities for that up here. But as luck would have it and fate would be, the "Pineapple Express" actually rolled into northern California (thus drenching my poor brother Jim down there) leaving us with just the usual drizzle and occasional sun breaks up here in the wild north. But who's to complain? We had a wonderful time. That's an iPhone shot on the beach at Cape Kiwanda. Photo tip of the day: always go with a companion who owns a red jacket (in this case, my lovely wife Nancy, a real trooper), and have them stay a few steps ahead of you. It's better than buying a new lens!

I'm a native son of the left coast, and have tramped its shores from Coronado Bay to the Puget Sound. My wife and I take particular delight in the winter and early spring out here; the light is moody and unpredictable (like me, before I've had my coffee) and every scene invites a quiet moment of contemplation. And I certainly don't mind the rain. This old tree standing guard over an unnamed creek is at Cape Lookout, taken with my Fuji mirrorless.

It's almost Christmas, the crowds are gone, the weather is perfect, and that camera in your hand is the best damn camera in the world. You've run out of excuses.

And so have I. It's time to storm the beach.

Thinking About the Black & White Portrait ~

I'm mainly a people and portrait kind of guy. It's what initially drew me to photography and sustains my fascination even today. The studio I apprenticed at back in '73 had, among many other cameras, a big and beautiful 5 x 7 view camera with a delicious Carl Zeiss lens. As a newbie I certainly didn't appreciate it then as much as I do now in retrospect, but boy, the portraits it made (and which was my job initially to print) were stunning, as you can imagine. It was a more static, classical style which I still view as timelessly beautiful.

Over the years, portrait styles evolved as tastes changed and new equipment and technologies came along. Back in the day, a hand-help camera in the studio was considered as taboo as drinking on the job (although, now as I think about it....) My influences then were the likes of Yousef Karsh, Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, and so many others, their books at my side.

And these days I'm more than likely, as I rely on my digital cameras, to step away from the studio and shoot in color. What, then, continues to be the fascination with the black & white portrait? It's hardly an anachronism. It remains a relevant art form, capable still of producing penetrating and personal images. Maybe it's just me, but I sometimes see a great deal more texture, tonal values, and intimacy in them. And maybe we don't see it just as we did with the great films and the high-silver papers, but it's there nonetheless. My studio mate Whitney often shoots in black and white, forsaking even an original color file, and consistently produces timeless and beautiful portraits of children as well as adults.
So I'll keep at it, and hope you do too. Even though, without a darkroom to lock yourself in, it's tougher to drink on the job.

I'm just saying.

Heading Out For The Day ~

I didn't post a blog last week, and will blame it on Thanksgiving. Sorry about the interruption, but the turkey was great, the wine was plentiful, and the self-loathing for over-indulging lingered for a delicious few days. But then on Monday my friend Keri sent out a text that she was going to grab her camera and go wandering and was looking for some co-conspirators.  And that, mes amis, is my favorite outdoor activity. Like me, she is a recent convert to a mirrorless camera, the Olympus OM-D E-M5 (how do they even come up with those names?) and I am still wrapping my head and hands around the Fuji X-e2.  Wandering around the railroad tracks and warehouses of the inner SE of Portland provided some really fine colors and compositions. With our fellow co-conspirator Chaz we had a very creative and challenging (and cold!) afternoon.  My favorite shot of the day was the warehouse wall you see above. The colors and lines put me in an O'Keeffe-ish frame of mind. Does anyone else see a desert pueblo, or is it just me?

Sometimes the best photography happens when you're not thinking about it. Call up a friend, grab a camera, and just go. Anywhere. If it's a nice sunny day, don't worry; you can wait it out until the really good weather returns. The cloudiest, coldest, rainiest, windiest days are the ones made just for us. They are where the real surprises lay hidden.

A little turkey and wine wouldn't hurt, either.

Tweakable Software ~

Sometimes I just like to tweak the hell out of my photos. This frame of mind is either the result of a misspent youth, or growing up around artists. And upon reflection, I think those are both the same thing. Even a good "straight" image, like the one above, has a lot of image manipulation applied, since many years ago I realized I was less interested in reproducing what I saw than interpreting what I felt, and discovering along the way a lot of the mystery that was hiding in the image. That's why I do photography. And you? What's your excuse?

I just recently downloaded onOne Perfect Suite 9, and have been a big onOne user for a few years now. It's very robust software, and has given me so much more freedom to work and explore an image than I've ever experienced before. It's the sort of thing that keeps you at the computer until the wee hours.

But wait, there's more. As you by now are aware, I take a lot of iPhone photos, too. One of the creative apps I frequently use is called Mextures, which has some wonderfully crafted presets. And as if this all wasn't enough, if the image is appropriate I will layer it with a treatment in Auto Painter.
Because, you know, sometimes you just have to go nuts.  The wisest words ever spoken on the subject are attributed to Ansel Adams: Expose for the secrets, develop for the surprises.

Well, here's to the surprises.

Old, older, oldest ~

I have many passions (far too many, according to some) but the one that has captured my soul in photography for as long as I can remember is a passion for antique and non-silver photography. I'm an ardent collector of old photographs (but oddly not so much old cameras; I'm more a "software" guy than a "hardware" guy, I guess) and have at times been a dedicated practitioner of the arts, working in platinum and gum dichromate. The juncture of history and photography is fascinating. The one above is a salted-paper print; the inscription on the back, carefully recording the family names, is dated 1865. And why that fascinates me is this: the actual light that made this photograph reflected directly off those people, and I'm holding that light in my hand. That thrills me right down to the bone.

I had a contract for several years with Whitman College in Walla Walla, restoring old negatives and prints.  We had a beautiful old Elwood 5 x 7 diffusion enlarger, so we were able to print directly from some very old glass plate negatives. Bringing an old colloidal wet-plate negative back to life can really change the way you view photography's history, as well as your own.

The people you see reappearing on such a print, long dead more than a century,  would have interesting things to tell us if we could only listen. It makes me wonder what sorts of things we may want to tell some future restorer, a century from now, deciphering a by-then obsolete digital file.

Hope it's worth the telling.

Life in the Abstract ~

As someone who was raised in the arts I have a special fondness for the abstract and expressionist image. Photography, oddly enough, lends itself to this surprising well. We make a photograph by focusing in on a minute speck of time and space, to the exclusion of everything around it. What could be more abstract than that? We only think we recognize the trees and clouds. So I really enjoy looking for the image that has abstract, painterly qualities in itself. Like the one above: it's the side of a steam locomotive, painted in a brilliant orange, shot just above the drive wheels. By excluding the obvious and peering in on just color, line, and composition, I ended up with something that, to me at least, holds more visual interest than a simple picture of an engine.

And then there are those happy coincidences of graffiti and billboard that can end up looking like the expressionism of a troubled painter. I love discovering these serendipitous gems and trying to do them visual justice with my camera.
I always have, at the very least, my iPhone with me, and often as not even my mirrorless little Fuji camera. There's never an excuse not to constantly scan horizons near and far for art, fine or otherwise.

That little voice in my head is telling me (among so much else) to pay attention to everything, the big and the small. You never know what you'll see, but I bet it would make for a great photo.