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Lipizzaner Team, Dunapataji, Hungary

Infrared Street Photographs

Posted on January 6, 2023

With the invention of photography in the 19th century, photographers opened the spectacle of the natural world to the scientific community and to an awestruck public. After the introduction of faster dry plate emulsions, photography as a tool for research of unseen realities extended scientific knowledge beyond the observable, and photography routinely presented the previously…

Afternoon Light, St Kilda (Boreray and Stac an Armin (foreground) Hirta (background)

St. Kilda—Nature, the Sublime, the Picturesque

Posted on August 10, 2022

The term nature evokes mountains, waterfalls, deep forests, and Ansel Adam’s landscape photographs. This popular association of nature with beautiful outdoor splendor began in the 16th and 17th centuries. The landscaped gardens of the British and French aristocracy, which emphasized the precise control of nature, were an early expression of burgeoning nature and landscape consciousness. The rise…

Fox Talbot's Latticed Window, Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire, England

At Lacock Abbey: Talbot’s Latticed Window

Posted on June 29, 2022

In early June 2022, I toured Lacock Abbey, the large ancestral home of William Henry Fox Talbot, the inventor of the negative-positive photographic process. The highlight of the tour was the opportunity to look through the latticed window in the south gallery of Lacock Abbey, the subject of one of the world’s first camera-generated photographs….

Back of the screen at the Sage Crest Drive-in in Yerington Nevada

Photographing at the Sage Crest Drive-in

Posted on April 12, 2022

The first commercial drive-in movie theatre in the United States opened in 1933, just outside of Camden, New Jersey. In the car-centric late 1950s, drive-in theatres became very popular and reached a peak of over 4000 drive-in movie screens, nationwide in 1958. [1] One of the largest drive-in movie theatres featured spaces for 2500 cars,…

Cottonwoods in an ephemeral pond

At Spenceville, Reflections in an Ephemeral Pond

Posted on February 4, 2022February 6, 2022

In early January 2022, I had a chance to experiment with photographing reflections in an ephemeral pond in the Spenceville Wildlife Refuge in the Sierra Nevada Foothills of Northern California. After heavy December and January rains, seasonal streams were flowing and ponds were full. I was treated to a still morning and clear skies, perfect…

In Gold Country Feature Image

Relics, In A Gold Country

Posted on December 28, 2020

That the past is different from the present is its foremost attraction. We know about the past through history, memory, and relics. Photography is critical in shaping our knowledge of the past, as a physical record of the past, as a stimulus to memory, and through the creation of visual artifacts of the past.[1] The…

Stump in lake

Experimenting with Lens Blur: the Burnside 35mm Lens

Posted on November 12, 2020November 12, 2020

Humans see binocularly, whereas a camera lens records light with only one light source—monocularly establishing a single point of focus. The photographer chooses a single point of focus, giving emphasis and meaning to the image. By adjusting the focus in the image, a photographer can establish a hierarchy of focus and attention over the image….

Edward Weston setting up his view camera on the Oceano Dunes, California

Edward Weston—At the Oceano Dunes

Posted on April 28, 2020February 24, 2022

Edward Weston — The Thing Itself Photography in the decades just after the First World War joined modernist innovations underway in architecture, painting, sculpture, and literature. Modernist photography embraced an aesthetic of simplification, stripping away ornamentation to reveal the texture of paint or stone, to expose the steel structures of buildings, and distilling form to…

Dorothea Lange Exhibition. Oakland California

Locating Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother

Posted on April 26, 2020February 24, 2022

Social Documentary Photography / Farm Security Administration The term documentary is of relatively recent origin, first appearing about 1900, and was loosely used by film critic John Grierson in 1926. This term is now applied to a particular response in photography and film to the cultural upheavals following World War I and into the present…

Negative Portraits In Silver

Posted on March 5, 2020November 1, 2020

In a box of photographs collected at junk stores, I discovered a long-forgotten package of silver gelatin dry plate portraits. Likely created in the early 20th century, the photographer, the location, creation dates, and the subjects of the photographs are unknown. These many unknown only add to the haunting visual qualities of these silver gelatin…

Diana Camera Lens

Diana, Return to Hong Kong

Posted on December 14, 2018November 1, 2020

With a population of 7.5 million people crammed into 686 square miles, Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated cities in the world. With its harbors, skyline, mountains, islands, beaches, fogs, subtropical climate, and unique blend of European and Chinese cultures, Hong Kong is one of the most beautiful and vibrant cities in…

Dog Chewed Film

The Little Brown Dog, Chewed Film, Man Ray.

Posted on November 22, 2017October 29, 2020

So I have a little brown dog (Elliot). Eliot is a great dog, my constant companion, a great photo-buddy who jumps to attention whenever I pick up a camera or tripod. However, sometimes he reverts to his puppy personality and chews up clothing, shoes, blankets. Several years ago, he grabbed a roll of 120mm film…

Large Berg, Antarctica, Vest Pocket Lens

Frank Hurley, Antarctica, the Kodak Vest Pocket

Posted on January 25, 2016October 29, 2020

The Australian photographer, Frank Hurley is a unique case, and inexplicably his achievements remain largely unreported in many current histories of photography.  Although primarily known as a still photographer, Hurley would pioneer techniques first seen with his Antarctic expedition photography to create a wholly new entertainment form known as the “travelogue” or the “travel-adventure documentary” film.[1] Although his best work was completed one hundred…

Altar Crucifix, Mission La Purisima Concepcion, Lompoc California

Experiments with Digital Noise

Posted on February 14, 2015October 31, 2020

Photographing scenes where the light is very low can produce digital noise levels that can result in pixels which include more noise data than real photo light data. In digital photographs, these pixels usually appear as random dots, speckles or stains. In addition, the image quality may be compromised by the resulting image artifacts, loss…

Lumen print with red and blue morning glories on a blue field

Morning Glories: Lumen Print Making

Posted on January 17, 2015October 31, 2020

Morning Glories, a series of lumen prints Lumen printmaking is one of the most fascinating camera-less photographic processes. Lumen prints begin with silver gelatin photographic papers, the traditional photographic paper used in the making of black and white prints since the late 1870s. Silver gelatin photographic papers are conventionally used in a darkroom under safelight…

Borrowed Source: Mountain Detail, Jan Steen, (Dutch, 1626-79) The Marriage of Tobias and Sarah, 1673, Legion of Honor Museum.

Borrowed Sources

Posted on July 22, 2014November 12, 2020

Thoughts on Walter Benjamin, Appropriation, Technology and Landscape Walter Benjamin Published in 1936, Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction is the first commentary on the ways in which technology changes the conditions of art. Benjamin’s tightly written essay continues to generate debate and has spawned thousands of critical interpretations. In…

Merry-go-round, King School, Wisconsin

Old School

Posted on June 26, 2014October 31, 2020

We know about the past through history, memory, and relics; each of these daily refreshes our knowledge of the past. Relics are both of the past and present, and this signals their unique position. As remnants of the tangible past, relics exist as natural and physical features. In written and visual forms, history is the…

Caged Statue, Shrine Near El Cien, Highway 1, Baja California Sur, Mexico

Pinhole Photographs: Baja Missions and Roadside Shrines

Posted on January 15, 2014October 31, 2020

Pinhole Photography. The first written records of the optical properties of pinholes come from Mo Ti in China during the 5th century BC and in Aristotle’s Problems XV written in 330 BC. Dappled sunlight viewed under trees on clear days is evidence of the optical properties of pinholes. The crescent projections of the sun seen…

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