Category: A Symbol Life

Walking Againward

Posted on Posted in A Symbol Life, meaning

getting to your past work. And then

this is another multi delayed post. I liked the title. wrote it down, then forgot what I’d wanted it to be about. Happens too often.

While digging through last years work, I noted many that could fit into much older carts so put in the sub-head: getting to your past work.

A week passes and I’m thinking about carry cameras and how they may need permits someday. More importantly I’d discovered a very old note of mine with: Small Camera is the Big Invention. Whereupon I made a picture of some of my carry cameras.

The 3 cameras – 2 are film cameras. The one at the bottom (with a screen) is digital. It is the only camera I still use. The film cameras are no longer used. Film isn’t available. Not new film.

Odd, isn’t it, that the supposition of film is forever, digital is transient, subject to passing fashion doesn’t survive a simple againward glance.

  • minolta 110 (1976 – 1979) – I used this camera for several thousand rolls of film. The flash on it is a Nikon strobe which served to guarantee my night-time excursions would provide negatives that startled
  • cannon elph (1996 – 2002). Used APS cartridge system. Many hundreds of rolls.
  • sony cybershot (uses JPEG – format first used in 1992, 25 years old now) JPEG is used in medical imaging so will probably be around for many more years.

Againward

Don’t be so sure of your past until you’ve lived it.

Don’t rely on someone else’s prescription for your process

 

death by pinhole

Posted on Posted in A Symbol Life, overnight notes

OUCH!

darkrooms can be dangerous. especially in the dark.

these past few weeks, I’ve been tackling the chore of clear out. It was begun because I knew I had something. I didn’t know where it was.

Nope. Not here; nor there. Perhaps up there on that shelf atop this box. A smaller box of film fell onto me. Surprise, film boxes fall EDGE FIRST.

At first, I considered death by instant light.

A calmer me thought instead:

Slow, Long Death By Pinhole, would be more appropriate

Walking Backwards

Posted on Posted in A Symbol Life, morning wood, Portfolio Items

I have been this way before

I had it all written — but didn’t put it onto paper.

This post was about gaining back an image [mode] even with a changed method. Since I had it so firmly formed I went on to other things… It is gone. At least in the well shaped way –

In the 60s I made pictures in several ways – many explorations of the same picture rendered in differing manners. At the time I processed my own film – color, B&W didn’t matter. I was trained to high proficiency in Dye Transfer. Able to retouch separation negatives as well as air-brushing finish prints.

Things get lost. Sometimes those are ideas; mostly they are objects. More often stuff changes – ideas and ways to objects.

Photoshop is NOT built for use in the manner of a proficient color printer. Neither is it built to duplicate the retoucher from the 70s. It is, instead, built by a hobbiest with masterful math skills. Photoshop carries within it the artifact of complying with needs of the commercial offset world. It isn’t from the darkroom, except in a superficial ‘dodge & burn’ way.

The origin of this is a method, a way of finding images within the pictures: working beyond the original camera product. Dye Transfer required you pull the picture apart, then re-assemble it. To some few of us this provided opportunity not merely delayed gratification.

The picture with this post is part of a series that hasn’t satisfied me. Over the past week I’ve been working and re-working the same picture. This version is closer, which means I am headed in the correct direction. I’m still walking backwards by using Photoshop.

I am using PS3, 5, 6 — sadly Adobe, via their installation failures,  has boxed my system, leaving me with digging out old portions of software — building my own scripts, etc to get to what I had 10 years ago. Even that wasn’t what I had 40 years ago. The above would have taken me 2 days using dye transfer process. So far I’ve put twice that effort into getting to this un-successful result.

Growing Pains are harder in those with enough of a path to know another way from the parking lot.

more to come…