It took us multiple attempts to arise early enough to make the 100 minute drive from Zion to Bryce for sunrise. When we finally did pull it off though, the grumpy, pre-dawn thoughts were washed away in the glow of the morning light off the hoodoo structures of the silent city.

Technical note: This image was exposed on Rollei Retro 80S, a black and white film with unadvertised infrared sensitivity. I exposed this through a Hoya R72 Infrared filter with about a six stop filter factor, in case you were curious.

Holga 120FN
Rollei Retro 80S
Hoya R72 filter

Tags:   Holga Bryce Canyon American Southwest film black & white Utah landscape lens flare national park American landscapes 6x6 zaahphoto Silent City Scanned at Blue Moon Camera Nikon Coolscan 9000 Rollei Retro 80S Infrared Hoya R72

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This is a pinhole image I took earlier this year at the Hoover Dam. Part of the joy of photography is nothing is ever mundane with the right set of eyes, including riding up and down escalators. Granted, I am always a bit cautious about pulling out my battered and taped wooden box of a pinhole at areas such as dams, federal buildings, national historical monuments, etc. But something about the silvery stretch of the escalators caught my attention as I was riding up. So I turned around and rode back down, got my pinhole out and caught this exposure on the ride up. I am pretty sure I used a tripod, set up on the escalator, which probably made things look even more odd to those coming down the other side. But that is fine with me.

The other reason I wanted to post a pinhole image this morning is to post a link to this story here about a fellow that did a six month long exposure of the Clifton Suspension Bridge in the UK. Well worth a look. Thank you Jay for passing this on to me.

Tags:   pinhole zero69 Zero Image Hoover Dam Nevada pinscape escalator going up film Southwest Zeb Andrews Zeb Andrews photography Blue Moon Camera

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"There are no pictures when I reload" Gary Winogrand

Another shot from my recent trip through the Southwest. This was taken inside Valley of Fire state park in Nevada. Our route took us from Palm Springs, California to Las Vegas, Nevada to Page, Arizona, to the Grand Canyon and back again to Palm Springs. Shortly before leaving for California I realized I wanted to swing through Valley of Fire as I had seen some spectacular shots here on Flickr (what an amazing tool Flickr is by the way for planning trips).

Turns out Valley of Fire was on our way from Las Vegas to Page, so it was an easy side trip to fit in. And an impressive one at that. As Wendi described in her post, you drive through impressively unremarkable flat desert for miles and miles and then suddenly you find yourself in what looks like the remnants of a movie set from some Martian sci-fi flick.

To jump track briefly, I thought the quote from Gary Winogrand strangely appropriate for this shot. For those unfamiliar with who may be the most prolific photographer in history, Gary Winogrand shot dozens of rolls of film a day. He would shoot a roll in the time it took him to walk one New York city block, all the while lecturing on not to shoot from the hip, to always use the viewfinder lest you lose control of your photography. One of his students famously asked him during a workshop, while Gary was crouched on the sidewalk quickly reloading his Leica if he ever regretted the photos he missed when he had to stop to reload. The quote above is his famous reply, and an interesting one.

When I first heard it years ago, I thought it a bit foolish. There are ALWAYS photos to be taken, even when one reloads. In fact, it seems that in those moments you don't have a camera ready, that the most photos seem to pop up. But over the years I have come to appreciate a subtle nuance to this truth. Sure there are visions and scenes to see, but photographs rely on a ready camera and photographer, otherwise they are just passing light, nothing less or more. It is that man, or woman, standing there seeing what there is to see and having that amazing mechanical device we call a camera ready, that allows a photograph to be created. For Gary, he probably saw lots of things while he was reloading, or maybe he chose not to, but they weren't photographs. Some of them could have been certainly, but without film in that camera and him in that right spot...

And this is what this shot boils down to. As we drove out on this road on my date with minor photographic destiny (to take this photo) I saw a couple of other spots that I was tempted to stop. I could see the light coming up and knew before long it would be too high and too harsh. And almost stop I did. One color cliff face in particular I thought would make a splendid pinhole shot with its wide field of view. But I did not stop, I kept driving. And by doing so I arrived in this spot to take this photo. By the time we headed back, the light was too high and too harsh and that opportunity for a photograph I had seen earlier was beyond my grasp. But then again, had I stopped, would this photo have existed much longer? Long enough that I might still have happened along to take it? Maybe. Maybe not.

See a photograph is not simply a beautiful scene. It is not simply light across a landscape. It is not a sublime moment between two individuals caught on a street corner. A photograph is a magical concoction that is part scene, part intuition, part imagination, and part perception. Note that three of those four parts are human ingredients, notably the human with the camera.

So maybe Gary's answer contains a great deal of wisdom. Maybe there ARE no photos when we reload, because how can their be a photo with no one to take it?

And maybe I may have stopped and gotten something spectacular along those red cliffs when I first saw them and missed this shot in the process. But I didn't. For me this shot existed, and does. The other is memory and imagination.

Tags:   Pentax 6x7 Valley of Fire Nevada red rock desert Southwest state park road travel landscape film color blue Zeb Andrews Zeb Andrews photography Blue Moon Camera

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Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given something is taken. Society acquires new arts and loses old instincts. What a contrast between the well-clad, reading, writing, thinking American, with a watch, a pencil and a bill of exchange in his pocket, and the naked New Zealander, whose property is a club, a spear, a mat and an undivided twentieth of a shed to sleep under! But compare the health of the two men and you shall see that the white man has lost his aboriginal strength. If the traveller tell us truly, strike the savage with a broad-axe and in a day or two the flesh shall unite and heal as if you struck the blow into soft pitch, and the same blow shall send the white to his grave.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows a little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His note-books impair his memory; his libraries overload his wit; the insurance-office increases the number of accidents; and it may be a question whether the machinery does not encumber; whether we have not lost by refinement some energy ... some vigor of wild virtue.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I could be mirroring some of his thoughts on civilization, or he some of mine on the whiz bangs of modern photography. Well either way, it is an interesting couple of paragraphs.

This was taken inside the Venezian casino in Las Vegas on my first trip there. I admit that I was equal parts enthralled, repulsed, impressed, fascinated, and disbelieving. The casinos... nay this whole section of the city is built as to never make you want to leave. To believe that everything worth experiencing is right here, all the while charging you $4 for a bottle of water. It really is a "fascinating" experience in a number of ways.

As for Emerson and photography, well this is why I think photography classes should all be taught with manual, mechanical film cameras and progress up from there. I sometimes wonder if the cameras today (film and digital) which are capable of doing everything short of cooking your breakfast really make you better or worse at photography? I guess in a sense it is possible to be able to actually get worse at photography while being able to take better photos.

I guess.

Tags:   Las Vegas Nevada casino film photography interior civilization Pentax 6x7 Kodak Portra 160VC cities urban Zeb Andrews Zeb Andrews photography Blue Moon Camera

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Remember a few posts ago, I was talking about beautiful stretches of road and I mentioned Hwy 89 heading south out of Arizona? This is one reason. Perhaps the most spectacular example along that highway, but in reality the rest of the drive between Page to nearly Flagstaff is a pretty impressive display of landscape. Starting at Lake Powell, and then passing Horseshoe Bend and then past a myriad of colored hillsides that makes the Painted Hills here in Oregon seem like an afterthought, the road is one stretch of amazing after another. The other thing I remember about Hwy 89 is losing my nice Bogen tripod, but I think I have told that story already in a past post. ;-)

Tags:   pinhole landscape Arizona bend Horseshoe Bend Colorado River scenic sunset canyon Zero69 Zero Image wooden cameras Blue Moon Camera

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