Restored Passion

Photography was something I really enjoyed doing. Now, before you think I’ve lost the enjoyment of it and am calling it quits, keep reading. My path to dedicating so, so many hours of my life to this mashup of Art and Science started as an adolescent, watching my dad and both grandfathers taking pictures with their SLRs on the many vacations we took together. One grandfather in particular got what was then a quite nice camera: a Nikon N6006. It was the first time I’d seen an autofocus camera and was amazed that a camera could do such a thing all by itself. Around that time, my grandmother gifted me a basic point-and-shoot camera for Christmas. A few years later, in high school, I took my first photography class and soon got brought on to the yearbook staff. I had such fun recording scenes out in the world on film and then coming back into the darkroom and processing that film. Making prints from those negatives and watching an image gradually form on a blank piece of paper added to the magic. Later, at the end of my mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, I was working with my Mission President in applying to college at the brand-new Brigham Young University-Idaho, my choice of major was either Photography or another subject I thoroughly enjoyed, American History. In a figurative coin-toss, I went with Photography. At the time, landscape photography wasn’t really on my radar, as far as career plans were concerned, having been involved with the yearbook staff in high school. I enjoyed taking landscape photographs, had taken a lot during high school, but I figured I’d end up in photo journalism, or find work at a mountain bike or BMX bike magazine to put bread on the table (Little did I know then just what those industries would look like even a mere decade later).

The fun and amazement continued to grow, fostered by an excellent professor/instructor/mentor/friend Darren Clark. During my first semester the plan was to pursue the journalism or magazine path, but seeing the amazing landscape work Darren was doing, getting more immersed in the work of Ansel Adams than I had been previous, as well as the work of Edward Weston, and John Sexton during that early part of my education, and then making more and more landscape photographs of my own, my career ideas and plans started shifting.

We learned the Zone System during my second semester, while still working with my Nikon N90s, which I got during my senior year of high school, and which I still own (I’ll never ever get rid of that fantastic camera). The control that the Zone System makes possible oopened up a whole new dimension to me, adding more excitement and satisfaction in making consistent negatives, allowing for making easier prints.

And then I was introduced to the View Camera (my memory is a little hazy, but I think it may have also been during my second semester), after having only worked with the 35mm format. If the control of the Zone System sparked a flame, then learning about and how to use the view camera was like pouring several tanker trucks worth of gasoline on a wildfire. That was when photography went from a thing I really, really enjoyed to being a passion. An obsession. I loved  viewing the world upside-down and inverted on the ground glass. I enjoyed the slow and deliberate nature of the process. I loved the huge negatives. I soon bought a Graflex Crown Graphic 4x5, a Nikkor 90mm SW f/4.5 and some film holders. It didn’t have the movements of the monorail camera owned by the school that I learned on, but I didn’t need them for the kind of work I was doing and still do. Not long after that, I found and purchased a Kodak Improved Century View No. 2 5x7 on eBay. It cost $120, including shipping; the previous owner said one of the gears to adjust the focus was broken, but I never had any issues with it. I think one of the knobs that locked things down was just a little too tight. That format became my favorite: I just love the elongated rectangle. The 4x5 format has always felt a little too square-ish to me for my own work, though there has been the rare photograph that feels better having a tighter frame. Another “pro” for my 5x7 argument is that that size negative produces wonderful, intimate contact prints, a strong motivator in my wanting to learn the carbon printing process.

That old Kodak (I traced the serial number to a manufacture date of 1905) became my main camera, using the Graflex as my backup, or the camera I would bring on longer hikes or backpacking trips where I didn’t particularly want to take the 5x7, though the 5x7 accompanied me on a few trips deep in the backcountry of Yellowstone National Park. I took it everywhere; it was never left home no matter where I went, as is the case with any camera of just about every photographer out there.

Early in 2008 I was able to use a Nikon D300—then one of Nikon’s newest prosumer digital bodies, borrowed from another good friend, Jon Long. I was impressed with how well that camera performed, and around June of that year I purchased one of my own. A few weeks later I moved down to Logan, Utah ahead of starting grad school at Utah State University. Despite no access to dedicated darkroom facilities between graduating at BYU-I in 2005 and starting grad school in 2008, I made the bathrooms of the apartments I lived in work to process the sheets of film I exposed. But during that first (and only) year of grad school, my use of the digital camera really increased to the point that my use of the view camera all but ceased. The ease and convenience of the digital camera was just too alluring!

During the summer of 2009, I came to the incredibly hard decision to discontinue my graduate studies, which meant I was once again without access to a dedicated darkroom to process film. Since I had pretty much transitioned completely over to digital, I decided to sell off all of my large format equipment. I pretty much never regretted selling the 4x5, and still don’t really regret it to this day, but I didn’t make it a week after selling the 5x7 before I was filled with regret, even though I didn’t have an easy way of processing the film in the house I was living in at the time.

I continued to photograph, despite being filled with regret of having sold the 5x7. I felt like I’d evicted a part of my very being, part of my photographic make-up, even though I hadn’t made much work with it at all over the previous year. Around 2014, now living in a different place, I found and purchased another 5x7, along with a lens and film holders, made a few exposures, processed the film in the cramped bathroom—I haven’t yet mentioned that I was processing in open trays, and so had to be in complete darkness—and decided I didn’t want to put up with that and sold it all off again. I had a little less regret that time, but it was still there. Then in 2016 I did the same: bought a whole new kit, made some photographs, processed the negatives, decided processing film in trays hunched over the side of a bath tub was too big a pain, and sold it off again.

Meanwhile, over the years, I lost the same passion I had for photography. It wasn’t something I was conscious of, and it’s only been within the last five or six months that I’ve come to realize that it had happened at all. It’s true that I went through phases of greater and lesser productivity—my Lightroom catalog shows a fairly large dearth of images made in 2014—and I made work I’m quite happy with and proud of. It’s true that I still got a great amount of satisfaction and joy out of practicing photography almost exclusively digitally.

Starting in the late fall/early winter of last year, I began collecting parts of Eastman Kodak 2-D 5x7 cameras, finding pieces for sale on eBay here and there, and by February of this year I had my final piece to make a complete camera, as well as a lens (a Schneider Super Angulon 120mm f/8) and half a dozen film holders. I then spent two weeks disassembling everything, stripping and sanding the wood of it’s old finish and stain and applying a new stain and finish, and polishing the brass. Since then, that restored camera has been my main way of making images, not including my iPhone. It’s been during that time that I’ve felt an excitement for photographing that I haven’t felt for so long. Like I said earlier, that’s not to say that I haven’t experienced excitement and joy about new concepts and techniques I’ve delved into over the last decade or so—I have. But using the large format has resurrected the highest excitement for the art and craft that I had between 2003 and 2009. It’s been so good to have that kind of structure to the act of photographing again. And owning our own house, and having some decent options for daylight processing mean that many of the frustrations of not having a dedicated darkroom are gone.

I may not be as prolific an image maker right now as I was fifteen years ago—being a husband and the father of two young boys are greater priorities, speaking qualitatively, not quantitatively, though the three of them do demand and deserve all the time I can give them. Finding the balance between Home Life, Work Life, fulfilling my church calling, and spending time in my other hobbies and interests is no easy thing. Thankfully some of those things can all blend together. At any rate, the 5x7 camera is back in my life, and all is right in my little photographic world.

What I’m listening to—Podcast edition, Vol. 1

Podcasts have been a staple in my listening/entertaining/learning habits since This Week in Tech and Diggnation started in 2005. The former continues on, but the latter ended in 2011. I’m no longer a faithful listener of TWiT—I’ll listen to an episode if the show notes list anything particularly interesting to me—but as podcasts have been such a prominent thing in my life for so long, I thought I’d create a series of blog posts listing the various podcasts I listen to. Some are still going, while others have gone dead but episodes still remain online to listen to. So with that, here’s Volume 1:

First, what may be the longest-running photography podcast: LensWork—Photography and the Creative Process, by Brooks Jensen. Brooks puts out a daily “Here’s a Thought” episode, usually 3-5 minutes long where he briefly shares thoughts on some aspect of photography, and a weekly longer-form episode, where he goes a bit more in depth on a photography-related topic. Those topics range from wish-list features for new cameras, to philosophical ideas, to dealing with challenges a creative person might encounter. As of the time of writing this post, the long-form LensWork episodes number over 1300, and the “Here’s a Thought” episodes number over 1400, so if you’ve not yet listened to this podcast and are the type to listen to the backlog of a new subscription, you’ll have plenty to binge.

Up next is On Taking Pictures, by Bill Wadman and Jeffery Saddoris. OTP began in May of 2012, then ended 325 episodes later in July of 2018, and for those 6 years, Bill and Jeffery had some truly great and inspiring conversations. Despite the title, this was not really about just photography, but about life, relationships, mental health, art in general, and so much more. The conversations these two had were really on a level with being in a graduate class. Those still subscribed to this podcast got a surprise in October of 2018 when the two decided to roll tape on their discussion after Apple announced new hardware, and then the feed lay dormant, seemingly done for good, until January of this year, when we got another big surprise and found a new episode they’d recorded, followed by another two episodes since then. This one is well worth going through the whole backlog.

After On Taking Pictures ended, Jeffery continued recording podcasts, under three subtitles/topics: Process Driven, conversations with artists of various disciplines, Iterations, along the vein of Jensen’s “Here’s a Thought” episodes, and lastly, Deep Natter, conversations with a different set of artists, most often Sean Tucker, on the more philosophical side of living a creative life. And like OTP, these conversations are about photography, but not really about just photography. Photography becomes a metaphor for living a more fuller life, and the challenges of life become metaphors for dealing with creative and photographic challenges. You can find the three podcasts in Jeffery’s Everything feed.


About 10 years ago, Phil Monahan of Orvis shared a video in his Friday Fly Fishing Film Tour blog post he put out every week. This video featured a fly fishing guide by the name of Hank Patterson. The video was full of the worst advice and instruction a fly fisherman could ever put to use, and the humor and sarcasm coming from him was lost on so many people who viewed the video. But it was so over the top that I’m still amazed anyone ever took him seriously. Flash forward to 2019, and Hank started up a podcast titled Hank Patterson’s Outdoor MisAdventures. If you’re a lover of the outdoors, give this one a listen. Hank is sometimes joined by his very indoorsy friend, Kevin, where they talk about basically how to not do the outdoors. There’s never a dull moment listening to Hank.


And lastly, a podcast called The Wild with Chris Morgan. Each week, Morgan tells a new story of wildlife, and the ecosystems they inhabit to educate and bring awareness to listeners of issues our planet is facing.

What podcasts are you listening to? Share in the comments!

Dream features

Every once in a while I ponder what my dream features I would love to see manufacturers build into their cameras or lenses, and I have a few that are right at the top of my list, and have been for the better part of a decade:

 

First, I would love to see live exposure view. We saw this in the iPhone 12, and now the 13 (I’m sure the feature exists in the Android platform, but I’m an Apple guy). During night photography or long-exposure photography, it would be nice to see a live view of the exposure build as it gathers light during the time the shutter is open. Sort of the way one sees the image magically appear on a sheet of photo paper in the wet darkroom. That way, you could start the exposure, and end it once you’re satisfied with the image. I know it could cause some pretty massive battery drain, but many cameras can accommodate a battery grip, or even an external power supply, so that hurdle could be cleared pretty easily.

 

Second, and this one is a technological biggie: the ability for the camera to shut off individual pixels after it reaches a defined exposure point. To explain: using Photoshop as an example, the brightness of a pixel has a value on a scale of 0-255, 0 being the blackest black, and 255 being the whitest white, and no visual information is contained at either extreme. With this feature, you could tell the camera to limit each individual pixel to gain no more than a set amount of brightness on that scale, say, 245-250, where you’ll still get bright highlights, but won’t completely lose information or detail. If any of you are familiar with the Zone System, this would be akin to placing our highlights on Zone 8.5-9. Like I said, this one would be a biggie, because it may make the camera comically large with all the added transistors and diodes and any other electrical components that would be needed for allowing the control of millions of pixels, but it’s one I dream of.

 

And thirdly, and perhaps the one I want the most, would be to invert the image on the LCD in live view. I spent many years looking at the ground glass of a large format camera. When using a large format camera, the image of the scene being photographed is projected through the lens onto a piece of glass that has been frosted, so it has some opacity. This projected images is upside down and backwards, that is, what is up is down, what is down is up, and things on the right end up on the left side of the glass, and things on the left end up on the right side of the glass. It’s the way every single lens ever made works. Even your own eye sees the world this way, your brain just flips everything to the way we see. So it is with the SLR, DSLR and mirrorless cameras (and some medium format cameras, but we’ll not bring those into the present discussion). In the case of the SLR and DSLR, there is a prism that bounces the image around until we see the image “correctly” in the viewfinder. I found that viewing the world upside down and backwards was an incredibly helpful tool in composition. It drew your eye to shapes and spatial relationships, and revealed value (shades of dark and light) in ways that you don’t get by viewing the world the way we already see it. In today’s digital cameras, meaning mirrorless cameras, the optical “correction” is written into the software/firmware of the camera. It would only be a matter of adding a menu option to let you invert the image. Something that could even be added to previous generations of cameras via a new software update.

 

Do any of you have dream features you wish camera/lens manufacturers would add to their products?

Tommy, The Photographer

Tommy periodically comes to me or Gina and asks for our phones to take pictures, and watching him photograph has been very refreshing and educational. Yes, the man with the BFA is learning something from a child who’s only in pre-school. I’ve been making photographs of him, and now his younger brother, exploring my curiosity of how a child sees the world. Handing the camera over to him has shown me literally just that. It’s also been a good lesson to re-learn as a photographer watching him explore angles, assemble an image, work through a design and composition, get low, or close, with no preconception of what is and isn’t a good photograph. He just plays and tries new things. It’s something that I need to do more.

Enjoy a selection of images made by Thomas:

Fire Rings

Over the past 13 or so years I’ve had a mild fixation on fire rings. I’ve always been drawn to the way humans interact with and alter their environment, be it for survival (benevolent, maybe necessary, and well-intentioned regardless of location, or heeding Leave No Trace principles), recreation (may or may not be benevolent, most likely unnecessary, may or may not adhere to Leave No Trace principles), or vandalism (malicious, and wholly unnecessary), and fire rings are features in the landscape that can fit any of the three categories. I’ve mainly gravitated to those fire rings that are on public lands in dispersed camping designated areas, as opposed to those in campgrounds run either by the State or a private campground, I think really because they highlight some inner, or perhaps ancient or primal need, desire, or instinct we have for fire.

Temple Fork Canyon, Utah

I don’t know if all of these photographs will end up as anything; sometimes it feels like it’s a bit of a one-trick pony: if you’ve seen one fire pit you’ve seen them all. But also, I’ve sometimes been surprised, and even a little dumfounded by where people have decided to make a fire. And, in the era of Covid, and having passed through two summers of increased use of our public lands, I’ve been disgusted and appalled by what and how much people have left behind in fire pits, either charred or even melted remnants of the fire there, or whole bags of unburned garbage. And in all of that, I feel like a whole body of work could materialize; I just need to spend some time looking at all the images I’ve made, and make even more. But for now, enjoy a few of my favorites I’ve made over the years.

Left Hand Fork Canyon, Utah

Illegal Fire Ring, Bear Lake, Utah

Franklin Basin, Utah

Willow Creek, Idaho

Along Laketown Road, Utah

Franklin Basin, Utah

Willard Peak Road, Utah

Franklin Basin, Utah

Unusual Lens

Several years ago now a retired co-worker came into my office with a giant lens, not like any I’d ever seen before. He handed it to me and explained it was an old TV camera lens. He asked if I wanted it, and despite not having any way of using it, I knew I had to have it, so I accepted his offer.

The lens, a Schneider Varigon 17-170mm from the 1960’s, sat on my shelf for while. I thought that I might use it for some Franken-camera made out of a cardboard box or something, but I told one of my brothers, who has a 3D printer, about it, and he started designing an adapter to mount it to my DSLR.

Once he got it done, the lens still sat for months. I knew before the adapter got finished that there was no way it could cover a full frame camera, as it was made for 16mm film, so I knew there would be vignetting. I also didn’t know (still don’t) the distance it needed in order for it to focus properly, so I had no idea what to really expect. When I got the lens in my hand and mounted it to my camera, it was a very pleasant surprise. There was heavy vignetting, especially at when the lens is zoomed any wider than about 150 mm, and if the exposure was set bright enough, some of the internals of the lens can be seen. I soon found that there’s a very narrow window in which things come into focus. Of course with a lens that old, predating any kind of dream about digital photography technology and what it would be capable of, the coatings on the glass are virtually nonexistent, and so the lens flares like crazy, and the sensor on my Nikon Z7 vastly out-resolves the resolution of the glass.

I brought the lens out with me on a few outings after I got the adapter, but nothing I was doing then really jived with the limitations that new piece of gear presented, and so I felt rather uninspired in what to do with it.

But then we bought our house, and as I spent hour after hour working there, and walking through the back yard with all the Ivy and Yucca and Roses and Virginia Creeper and grape vines, I knew that when I was done with all the renovations and had time to get the camera out again, that this lens would be exactly the tool to use to get to know our property.

I’ve had the lens out a few times in the past few weeks, and it’s been pretty fun to look at the backyard through that lens, literally, and metaphorically. That yard is so rich with vegetation that between the lens-based work I can mine from it and the lumens I have in mind to begin, I think I’ll never exhaust this place of its photographic potential.

Transitions

Back in March we saw a house for sale in Providence, and after a showing with our realtor, we decided to put an offer on it. We knew the offer wasn’t super strong, but still hoped to get the house. We didn’t know at the time that we would lose that offer, and go on to make and lose an additional five offers. After the fourth, the fifth, and then the sixth, we had really lost nearly all hope of ever finding a house in this crazy market. We knew it wasn’t the best time to be looking, but our family needs to be in a house of our own.

Meanwhile, Gina’s brother in Brigham began building an addition to their house last year, and while we were walking through on Mother’s Day, he and his wife offered the basement apartment space to us to live in until we do find a house. Gina and I talked it over and ultimately decided to take them up on it. We started making preparations to move, and on June 26 (plus a few days to clean) we officially became Brighamites.

In addition to that, in early June, Gina’s mother got in contact with the owner of a house that has sat vacant for about twenty years. It turned out that the guy was thinking of selling the house, and wasn’t interesting in listing it. We were given contact info, and met with him twice, and long story short, we’re now under contract!

Despite being vacant for twenty years, the owner, whose permanent residence is in North Logan, has kept very good care of it, inside and out. There are a few major-ish projects to do before we move in, but we couldn’t be more excited about living there! The house closes on August 2, but due to the house being fully furnished with 90+ years of accumulation, the owner has asked for up to an additional 45 days to fully vacate.

The apartment part of the addition we’re now living in is still incomplete—we moved in before the kitchenette and the bathroom were finished. We got kitchen cabinets last week, and the shower walls were just installed yesterday, and still await the plumbing. We’re without kitchen and bathroom counters, including sinks. Thankfully Gina’s parents have helped ease many of the inconveniences we’ve had to live with for the past three weeks.

Living in a new city presents a lot of new opportunities photographically that I can’t wait to explore. Life, being such as it is at the moment, I haven’t been able to get out with the camera yet, but am really anxious to get out and start getting to know our new area through a lens.

52 Photographers

It's been far too quiet on this blog. I really need to make it more of a priority, and get back to posting more regularly. It's easy for me to blame stress from work (the electronics industry is insane at the moment), or the pandemic, or adjusting to two kids, but really, they're all just excuses, and at the end of the day, I have the time to keep a blog. I just need to use my time more wisely.

In addition to the Departures Blog, I keep a blog titled 52 Photographers. I started that blog back before and during my year of grad school as a way to help me find new photographers beyond those I had learned about and come to know and was getting to know as part of my graduate studies. I had only intended to let it run for a year. With a name like 52 Photographers, and featuring a new photographer each week, you could argue that I locked myself into that time frame. But years went by and I felt like I needed to feed that side of my creative life once again, and so it ran in 2018, after which I left it alone again.

Fast forward to December of last year, and the thought crept into my mind a couple of times, thinking it would be good to do something for the 2021 calendar year, but I never acted on it, and January came and went, and I figured I'd leave the blog alone for another while. But the thought to resume the blog hasn't really left me alone.

About a week ago, I decided it's time to just do it. Every time the thought entered my mind, I thought maybe I'd wait to do it in 2022, and run another volume of the blog during a calendar year, but 2022 is still a long ways off, and I don't want to wait that long. There's work I'm interested in NOW, and I want to share it sooner than later. So beginning June 5, Volume III of 52 Photographers begins! I'm excited to start it up again, and I have a lot of excellent photographers coming up, so stay tuned!

Why National Parks?

In Brooks Jensen's latest LensWork podcast, Searching versus Finding, he talks about why a photographer would want to go to a National Park to photograph. Here's my brief response/defense:

Why go to a National Park (let's be cliche and use Yosemite as the example that is almost always used in arguments such as this) to make photographs when that place has been so extensively photographed? Why bother make a photograph of Half Dome, or El Capitan, when Ansel Adams has already made perhaps THE Photograph of all photographs of those features?

Even though one may go to Yosemite, and make, compositionally, a nearly identical photograph to Ansel (who, by the way, made nearly compositionally identical photographs to Carleton Watkins), that person is still bringing THEIR own experiences, THEIR own emotions, THEIR own memories to that photograph. It may not be that they think they can "one-up" those who came before, though by chance that might happen—for example if a freak storm passes through, and raises the drama to 11—but it may be that they want to make a photograph that is THEIRS. Their own piece of work, something that they poured their own emotions and experiences and feelings into. Whether this is enough to pass muster for acceptance into a gallery is another debate.

I would love to hang an original Ansel Adams print on my wall. The likelihood of that ever happening is almost nill—I don't know that I'll ever be able to afford such a thing. But I can go to Yosemite, and bring my kids and my wife, we can have our own experiences, create our own memories, and those things will be wrapped up into the photographs I make there. And that's more than will ever be in an Adams print on the wall.

History of Photography, Part 1—The Camera Obscura

The History of Photography has long been one of my favorite subjects. When I was registering for college and needed to declare a major my choice was between some facet of history or photography. I didn’t know then that by the time I graduated I would have taken two semesters of Art History and two semesters of the History of Photography. So I got the best of both worlds in the end.

I thought it would be fun to create a series of posts covering various periods significant in the History of Photography, and to start off, I’ll be looking at how this box thing we call a camera came to be.

The concept of a camera, or that of what would eventually become known as a camera obscura, was first documented in the 5th Century, BC in China by a guy named Mo Ti. He observed that if you stood in a darkened room and put a pinhole in one wall, an image of the objects outside the room would be projected upside-down and backwards on the opposite wall. Aristotle, a few hundred years later, recorded his wondering why it is that when the sun passes “through…wickerwork, it does not produce a figure rectangular in shape but circular?...Why is it that an eclipse of the sun, if one looks at it through a sieve or through leaves, such as a plane-tree or other broadleaved tree, or if one joins the fingers of one hand over the fingers of the other, the rays are crescent-shaped where they reach the earth? Is it for the same reason as that when light shines through a rectangular peep-hole, it appears circular in the form of a cone?”

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The first extensive studies and descriptions of the camera obscura phenomenon were made by the Arab physicist Al Hazen in the 11th century. Among his experiments was his discovery that by using a smaller pinhole, image sharpness would increase.

Al Hazen’s experiments first influenced English philosopher and Franciscan friar Roger Bacon. Bacon explained that a solar eclipse could be safely studied using a camera obscura to then observe the shape projected by the rays of light passing through the aperture.

SolarEclipse 1544.jpg

Leonardo Da Vinci was also familiar with and influenced by the Latin translation of Al Hazen’s work. In 1502, Da Vinci recorded:

“If the facade of a building, or a place, or a landscape is illuminated by the sun and a small hole is drilled in the wall of a room in a building facing this, which is not directly lighted by the sun, then all objects illuminated by the sun will send their images through this aperture and will appear, upside down, on the wall facing the hole. You will catch these pictures on a piece of white paper, which placed vertically in the room not far from that opening, and you will see all the above-mentioned objects on this paper in their natural shapes or colors, but they will appear smaller and upside down, on account of crossing of the rays at that aperture. If these pictures originate from a place which is illuminated by the sun, they will appear colored on the paper exactly as they are. The paper should be very thin and must be viewed from the back.”

Over the course of his life, Da Vinci drew around 270 diagrams of the camera obscura, and he experimented with various shapes and sizes of apertures.

1646_Athanasius_Kircher_-_Camera_obscura-2.jpg

Although the principles of the camera obscura had been known since the 5th century B.C., it wasn’t until 1604 that this device finally got a name, in a book Ad Vitellionem Paralipmena written by German mathematician Johannes Kepler. Kepler discovered how the camera obscura works by threading a string connected to the edges of a book though an aperture cut into a table. This recreated the shape of the book on the opposite side of the aperture. With the aid of the camera obscura he studied the sun, and in 1607, he discovered sunspot, which he mistook for Mercury transiting the sun. Kepler continued experimenting with the camera obscura, making it portable in the form of a tent which he used to draw landscapes.

1858_-_Gagniet_(d)_Quarteley_(g)_-_Cours_de_Physique_(A._Ganot).jpg
gettyimages-1048118652-2048x2048.jpg

The camera obscura had been used as a drawing aid since the Renaissance, and it is widely speculated, and even perhaps hotly disputed whether and to what extend the Dutch Masters like Jan Van Eyck and Johannes Vermeer utilized the camera obscura to aid their paintings. The argument for their extensive use of the camera obscura was largely pushed forward by David Hockney and Charles Falco, and is known as the Hockney-Falco Thesis. In 1999, while looking at portraits by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, he became convinced from their accuracy that Ingres must have used a camera lucida, or something similar. Hockney then looked for evidence of the use of optical drawing aids in other paintings, and in 2001, he and Falco published their analysis in their book Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters.

Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait

Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait

Johannes Vermeer, Girl with the Red Hat

Johannes Vermeer, Girl with the Red Hat

The camera obscura would go see many improvements over time by using improved optics, and getting more and more miniaturized. In 1805, William Hyde Wollaston invented the camera lucida, a contraption that would be clamped to a table. It had a long upright arm that held a half-silvered mirror that could be set at an angle. The half-silvered mirror let the user see their subject, but they could also see through the mirror to a sheet of paper on the table. The user could then trace their subject below.

All of these developments only cover one side of the equation of recording an image of nature “automatically.” In the next post I’ll take a look at the experiments done in the search for fixing light.

Goals for 2020

Well, here we are, over a week into the new year and new decade, and over the past few weeks I’ve been thinking and pondering over what goals I would like to set and achieve in 2020. In the interest of adding some sort of accountability to them, I thought I’d post them here. At least the ones that are relevant to my photographic life. So without further ado, here they are:

  1. Make 8 new woven pieces.

  2. Make 4 new collages

  3. Print more often (the weaves do not count toward this)

  4. Take a photograph every day. I don’t intend to share each of these every day. I’ll try to share at least one a week, but this is just a personal exercise.

  5. Post to this blog at least twice a month.

I have another big goal for 2020 that is very much about photography, but separate from this website. Last year, late summer and fall, I made a few family portraits of my in-laws family and my own, and, in contrast to the “college years Andy”, I really enjoyed it. For years, almost two decades, in fact, I never really liked photographing people, and dealing with something that is independent and autonomous. The landscape didn’t need to be posed. I only needed to find the right point in space and click the shutter. But Tommy changed all that. And after doing these few portraits of my families, I’ve decided to take the plunge. So this year in 2020, I’m officially going to start doing portrait photography. My business will be (is) named 1 of 1 Photography, and I’m super excited to enter a new phase of life!

Favorite Photographs of 2019

As 2019 draws to a close, I’ve been thinking back on the work I’ve made through the year. We’ve done a fair bit of traveling, with a trip to Twin Falls, and Zion Nation Park. My project with Tommy keeps rolling, though it has slowed some since winter hit. I’d hoped to work on a few other projects, including the 10,000 Steps work, but I think I’m going to have to wait until next spring/summer to do anything. In all it’s been a pretty good year.

Favorite Music of 2019

2019 has been a good year for music. The Avett Brothers released their 10th studio album, and Amy Palmer released one of the most raw albums I’ve ever heard. And with a few earlier posts about music in mind, I thought it only fitting I do a post of some of my favorite songs of 2019.

Death in Midsummer, Deerhunter

The first on the list is the song Death in Midsummer by Deerhunter. The song’s cheery melody made by a harpsichord, piano, and guitar, belie the mortality-confronting lyrics. If you want to hear a new take on a 60’s psychadelic sound, give them a listen.

The Ride, Amanda Palmer

I wrote about the second song on the list back in February, so check that post out for my thoughts on The Ride by Amanda Palmer. Make sure you’ve got some tissue handy before you press play.

High Steppin’, The Avett Brothers

The latest album from The Avett Brothers, released in October, is their most political yet. They take on sexism, racism, and gun violence. In their announcement of the album on Instagram, Seth Avett says “We didn’t make a record that was meant to comment on the sociopolitical landscape that we live in. We did, however, make an album that is obviously informed by what is happening now on a grander scale all around us…because we are a part of it and it is a part of us.”

Closer Than Together isn’t my favorite record the Avetts have made—it’s a pretty heavy album. But I do feel it’s exactly the album that they needed to make this year.

High Steppin’ is one of the best songs I’ve ever known to give me a boost. Towards the end, they sing “The best beggars are choosers. The best winners are losers. The best lovers ain’t ever been loved. First place ain’t easy. The hardest part is believing. The very last word is love.” It’s a good “pick-me-up” in the midst of such a sobering album.

Bleeding White, The Avett Brothers

Closer Than Together opens with this rockin’ song that I would love to see live one day.

Get Yourself Together, The Black Keys

The Black Keys have a new album out, and it doesn’t disappoint.

Wade in the Water, John Butler Trio

These last 5 songs in the list weren’t released in 2019, but they’re songs and/or artists I’ve either discovered this year, or still get played quite frequently.

The first of these, is Wade in the Water by John Butler Trio. I’d never heard of this group until my brother introduced me to them while we were on a family fishing trip.

Ever since the soundtrack to Into the Wild came out in 2007, the song Hard Sun has been my personal anthem. I couldn’t listen to the album without wanting to just fill my backpack and just disappear into the woods. It took 5 or 6 years before that desire faded, though Hard Sun still remained my anthem. Until I heard Wade in the Water. Maybe it was the fact that my brother said it would make for a good fly fishing film intro, and then we started riffing on the idea. Maybe it was the fact that I was with my favorite people in my most favorite place on earth doing one of my most favorite things. Maybe it’s the fact that the song is about finding one’s self in the river and mountains. Really, it’s all of the above. Give it a listen.

We All Die Young, The Decemberists

Just like Deerhunter’s Death in Midsummer’s cheery tune belies the heavy, mortality-facing lyrics, so does We All Die Young by The Decemberists. I mean, the chorus has a bunch of children singing along to “We all die young.”

The Joke, Brandi Carlile

Holy dang, Brandi Carlile always knocks my socks off! There’s a part in The Story that still gives me goosebumps and chills every single time I hear it. The Joke has the same affect, and like The Avett Brothers’ High Steppin’, it’s a powerful song that gives me hope and strength.

When I Get to Heaven, John Prine

I love John Prine’s voice, both pre- and post-cancer. Maybe more so post-cancer. I think the rawness of it just adds to the words being sung.

Sugartooth, Brandi Carlile

Sugartooth is another one of those antithetical songs, with an upbeat melody, but a sad tale behind it, of a childhood friend of Brandi’s brother who took his life after becoming addicted to drugs. But perhaps the tune behind the lyrics fit a little better than the others on the list.

A lot of the music that has come out during 2019, and 2018 has been pretty heavy. And I think it needs to be. Art is there to help us understand, and to confront us with challenging topics, and with all that we are facing locally, nationally, and globally, I think we need hard art. I think we need songs and paintings and photographs and sculpture and poetry and stories by those blessed with those gifts to help us all cope and confront our fears and worries and anger and whatever else we may be struggling with. Great art can (should?) heighten our joys, and happiness, or turn negative feelings to positive ones. Amanda Palmer’s The Ride is a good reminder that we’re all going through tough things, or have gone through tough things. We’re not alone. We don’t have to struggle alone in silence. After all, “Isn’t it nice when we all can cry at the same time?”

Zion National Park

I’ve been a Utah resident for 11 years now (14 total, counting the 3 years I lived in Orem and Salt Lake City from 2005-2008), and in all that time, I’d never gone to Zion National Park. So when we started thinking of what to do for Gina’s fall break, we decided that was a good place to go.

On our way down, we toured the Kolob Canyon Scenic Drive in the northwest arm of the park so we could all stretch our legs. I got my first taste of the beauty, and grandeur of the park when we drove around a bend in the road and saw Tucupit Point towering in the distance. To say it was breathtaking would be…well, accurate, I suppose. Having been to Moab and Canyonlands and through San Rafael Swell, I’d seen sandstone formations before, but nothing like Tucupit Point. It wasn’t just the red of the rock that was so astounding, but the height, and the way it rose straight up from the surrounding topography. We hiked the Timber Creek Overlook Trail so we could all stretch our legs after the long drive. Tommy was real excited to be out of the car, and walked the entire distance.

The next day was our full day in the park. We got up early and drove to the visitor’s center and spent the day riding the shuttle, walking a few trails and driving through the east part of the park to let Tommy nap.

We started out by making a short visit at Big Bend Viewpoint, where I got to see the newly fledged California Condor flying overhead. I made a few photographs that I’m a little unsatisfied with while Gina watched Tommy throw rocks into the Virgin River. After that, we hopped on the shuttle again and rode to the last stop, and walked along the Riverside Walk. Tommy drove his brand new Duke Caboom Hot Wheels car on the rock walls lining the path. We ate lunch, and then headed back, following Tommy back down the trail.

Virgin River, Zion National Park 2019

It was getting to be time for Tommy to nap, so we rode the shuttle back to the Visitor’s Center and went for a drive to the East side of the park through the Zion-Mount Carmel Tunnel.

White Cliffs, Zion National Park 2019

White Cliffs, Zion National Park 2019

We finished the day at one of the most iconic/photographed viewpoints in the park. I just had to indulge and photograph there.

Virgin River, The Watchman, Zion National Park 2019

I don’t know if I’ve ever felt as overwhelmed visually by a place as I did in Zion. The place is stunning, to say the least.

Tommy

Despite my lack of posts here over the last few months, there hasn’t been a lack of photographs being made. Most of the work I’ve done has been in continuation of the Through Tommy’s Eyes project. Tommy’s really been giving us a run for our money lately, so it’s been harder to sneak away to photograph. We’ve tried to get out in the hills as much as possible, and I’ve photographed our little dude playing and tossing rocks every chance I’ve got. I’ve just loved watching him grow and learn, and even if nothing grand comes out of this project, I know I’ve got some great photographs documenting his childhood.

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Serendipity Strikes

Wow. I didn’t mean to let over two months elapse without posting here.

Last weekend we went up to Island Park, and while we were there, we went out to Big Springs to let Tommy see and feed the fish, and so I could photograph. I made a few photographs that are pretty much exactly the same as photographs I’d made there before, but I just can’t resist making them over and over. But then serendipity struck. I’ll spare the details, but long story short, I ended up underexposing by over 2 stops, resulting in this image (with a few edits in Lightroom):

About a year ago I made a similar mistake at Hyrum Reservoir, though not quite as bad:

After that first serendipitous “mistake,” I remember wanting to work more in that vein, but never did. I hope this one from Big Springs gives me a boost to remember to be more purposeful in this style.

Twin Falls, Day 2

I’ve been to all of these places before and photographed them all, but in many ways, though these places are familiar, it feels like I’m coming to these places for the first time (sorry if you’ve now got Foreigner stuck in your head). It’s been good to reacquaint myself with a landscape I fell in love with years ago.

I started the day by heading out to Thousand Springs, and got there before the sun rose and the moon set.

Moonset Over Thousand Springs, Idaho 2019

Thousand Springs, Idaho 2019

On my way back to town I spotted a couple Magpies building a nest in a tree. Magpies aren’t my favorite bird, but it was interesting to watch them build a new nest.

Magpie Nest Under Construction

We spent some time at Niagara Springs where Tommy ran and jumped off all those rocks (pictures of that are coming soon). I made some photographs I quite like.

Picnic Area and Firepit, Niagara Springs State Park, Idaho 2019

Niagara Springs State Park, Idaho 2019

We ended up going to a few other parks with playgrounds throughout the day so Tommy could play. I ended up photographing in parks more than I did at the places that drew me to this part of Idaho. I’m not complaining, mind you. I learned things about my creative process by visiting a variety of different places where the creative objectives are different.

Cascade Park, Twin Falls, Idaho 2019

Thomsen Park, Twin Falls, Idaho 2019

We finished out the day with a quick visit to Twin Falls Hydroelectric Project. This now singular waterfall and its dammed twin comprise the two waterfalls for which the city of Twin Falls gets its name.

Twin Falls, Idaho 2019

Twin Falls, Day 1

Sometimes I just need to get away from my normal photographic haunts as a bit of a palette cleanser, so we planned a tip out to Twin Falls, Idaho for me to do just that. We left Logan yesterday a little after noon, and after checking in to our Air B & B, we found a park so Tommy could run around after being in the car for almost three hours. I took advantage of the opportunity to gather some images for my parks project.

City Park, Twin Falls, Idaho 2019

City Park, Twin Falls, Idaho 2019

City Park, Twin Falls, Idaho 2019

After dinner, we headed out to Shoshone Falls, and they sure didn’t disappoint.

Shoshone Falls, Idaho 2019

I played around with a few different variations of this image before I made this one, and it’s my most favorite image from the trip and that I’ve made in a long time.

Tommy got super cranky, so we left earlier than I thought and hoped we would, but I couldn’t stay away from Perrine Falls, so I dropped Gina and Tommy off at the Air B & B, and headed over.

Perrine Falls, Idaho 2019

After I made a few images, I headed the rest of the way to the bottom of the canyon to Centennial Waterfront Park, and came back with some images I’m quite pleased with.

Submerged Dock, Snake River, Centennial Waterfront Park, Idaho 2019

Fisherman at Dusk, Centennial Waterfront Park, Idaho 2019

Don’t Litter, Snake River, Centennial Waterfront Park, Idaho 2019