Wrighteous

Architects may come and
Architects may go and
Never change your point of view.
When I run dry
I stop awhile and think of you 

So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright, Simon and Garfunkel

In Lakeland a couple of weeks ago I was able to steal away from my obligations for an hour or two on a couple of days to visit Florida Southern College. A number of the buildings there were designed by the notorious architect, Frank Lloyd Wright.

Though my purpose was to photograph, reverie crept in as I wandered around the campus. Think how it would be to be young again, lost in academia, cushioned from the mundane inanity of the outside world, our dreams laid out in front of us. *Sigh*

Frank;     Frank Lloyd Wright;      Mr. Wright.    I could almost see him, striding about the campus with his cane, cape, and flat brimmed hat.

I've never been able to decide how much to admire Wright's work. His designs are flamboyant, angular, detailed; and his style is definitely recognizable, and I do admire that much, but some of his creations appeal to me less than others. Occasionally, I find his design to be arrogant to the point of annoyance.

Great architecture plants the seeds of more daring or innovative architecture. Wright's buildings aren't the only ones on campus with flair and panache. Other structures there, whose architects remain unknown to me, are also certainly noteworthy.

I came to photograph the great Frank Lloyd Wright.   And so I did, and others as well.   It gave me a chance to try out my new (used) 50mm f1.4 lens. But mostly, the 24mm Tilt/Shift was the right tool for the job.

My wont is to photographically explore a subject ad infinitum, to return again and again, in differing light and changing skies, until I know it intimately.   Eventually, I make the photograph I want, or at least something that suffices. My time at Florida Southern was woefully inadequate.  I made some architectural portraits, nothing great, but I'm sure glad I got them.

The Neo Lounge

There is a bar in the River District

They call the Neo Lounge

And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy

And God I know I'm one

I do most of my photographing in the River District early in the morning. Sometimes in my morning walks, I walk past the Neo Lounge.  Its patrons are home, or who knows where, sleeping it off. I had noticed that they keep repainting this bar. They paint it more often than once a year. So I photograph it.

Other than the changes in the paint job, I don't really find it all that photogenic. Usually the cleaning crew's car is parked right in front, blocking me from getting the whole building. So, then I do a partial. 

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When I go to the river district, if the car isn't parked in front of the Neo Lounge and if it has a new paint job, even if I didn't make any keepers anywhere else, I feel that I had a successful morning if I get the Neo Lounge.  Certainly the smallest of small victories.

 

I've never been inside, never had a drink there, and have no wish to do that, but the Neo Lounge has become something of an ongoing thing to look forward to on my occasional visits to the River District. Have they painted it again? Is that car parked in front? 

 

I didn't get it when it was white and I didn't get it when it was green with shamrocks. That didn't matter to me then, but now it is a gap in my ongoing photographic history of the Neo Lounge.  It's just a tidbit, a photographic tidbit, not particularly worthy of anything.  But then, isn't that life?

We're Painting the Roses Red

My last couple of blog posts have been about film, so while we're on the subject...

In my film days I made color slides. I didn't grok black and white and didn't have a dark room. So, I thought I'd give it a go and bought a few rolls of Ilford black and white print film. I'd send the film off to have it processed, just as I did with slide film, but when I got the prints back - what a disappointment! They weren't black and white! They were gray. So, I got a large piece of white paper and a black kitten, figuring this would have to be black and white, not gray. Right? Say hello to Monama, on black and white negative film, when he was still new, before he earned his name.

Monama was generally uncooperative, would not pose, would not stay on the white paper, and wanted to do what his kittenish self wanted to do. After several minutes of frustration, Monama's mommy, my clever wife Peggy, picked a hibiscus bloom and gave it to him. It worked! I finally was able to make a few exposures of more than just kitty footprints on white paper. When the prints came back, the flower, of course, was gray. So, I scanned the negative, and in one of my earliest attempts at digital editing, colored the flower red, just like the playing cards in Alice in Wonderland. ♫ We're painting the roses red. We're painting the roses red. ♫

I've been mulling over a blog post regarding my notions about black and white, but it hasn't gelled yet, so this will have to do for now. By the way, the blossom that Peggy gave to Monama wasn't red.

Ballet for Seven Egrets

Or, How We Use To Do It in the Old Days

To finish the verse:

I've got a Nikon Camera

I love to take a photograph

So Mama don't take my Kodachrome away

Paul Simon
 

 

In my last blog post, I lamented the passing of film. In response to which, my friend Don Thompson commented that his first serious photography attempts began with digital. I guess that that's true for a great many photographers. 

Not only did I use film, I also used gear that was not exactly the latest tech. If I have something that works well, I tend to keep using it until it breaks down, wears out, or is pathetically behind the curve. (I've only had two cars in the last 35 years, and one wife in 45 years.) My first big glass was an ancient Nikkor 600mm f5.6 super-telephoto lens that I bought second hand, or more likely, third hand. From its serial number I learned that it was made in 1964. The lens is an enormous thing that feels as if it's made of cast iron. I also had a Nikon F2 camera from 1973. The camera is an all-metal, all-mechanical body. Film is advanced by a thumb lever. Remember those? The F2 and the 600mm lens are a pair of lovers who, once married, didn't like to be separated. Whenever I needed the super-telephoto, the F2 got the job, even though I had later, more sophisticated Nikon bodies. The heavy lens is a bear to handle – its manual focus is quite stiff, but the camera is a joy, a satisfyingly ergonomic leather-covered chrome-finished metal workhorse. I made many photographs with this pair, including some of the ones in the So Long, Kodak  post. 

 

One of the great technological advances incorporated into the F2 camera was a through-the-lens (TTL) light meter, though the camera will still operate without a battery. The early lenses for Nikon camera bodies with TTL meters were known as 'prong' lenses because of the metal appendage that let them couple with the camera's meter. The big 600 was made for the earlier Nikon F, which didn't have a TTL light meter, so the lens had no prong and couldn't let the F2's meter know of its aperture setting. Although I do own a light meter now for use with studio strobes, I didn't have one then. Exposure was based on my own best judgment. I usually was able to come pretty close to the correct exposure and if the light was tricky, I bracketed.

 

On a fine spring morning in 2002 at Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge, a favorite haunt of mine for bird photography, I had long since stopped photographing because the good light was long gone. I had packed up and was heading for the exit. I rounded a curve and there was this flock of great egrets enthusiastically foraging in a pool in a small opening in the mangroves. I set up the tripod, even though I knew the sun was too high, the light was too hard. White birds against a dark background in high contrast light - iffy at best. I couldn't help myself. I shot about a roll and a half of film. 

 

I used John Shaw's fast-5.6 rule, a variation of the sunny 16 rule, to determine the 'correct' exposure and then under-exposed by two stops to keep from blowing out the whites of the egrets' feathers. Before the instant feedback of digital, I had no way of knowing for sure if I had correctly judged the exposure. I was able to review the slides about a week later when they were returned from the lab. There were quite a few that were not too pretty bad. I had nailed the exposure. As soon as I saw the one, I knew I had a winner. I was so pleased I danced a little jig. 

 

In the fall of that year, I entered it into Ding Darling's annual photo contest. It was the first time I had ever entered a print in a contest. Ballet For Seven Egrets won first prize. Several people who saw the photograph on display in the Ding Darling Visitor Center contacted me asking for prints. It was the first time I ever sold a photograph. And I did it with an old-hat, non-computerized,  not auto anything, manual camera and lens.

So Long, Kodak

Kodachrome
Gives us those nice bright colors
Gives us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, oh yeah! 

Paul Simon 

Kodak is declaring bankruptcy, so I hear.

Kodak popularized photography for regular folks. As a young boy, I got a Kodak Brownie for Christmas one year. Its flash attachment screwed onto the side of the camera.  The round silver reflector accepted flash bulbs that had to be replaced after each shot.  Ouch! Be careful! It's hot. The heat of the flash would bubble and deform the glass of the bulb.  The roll film came in a yellow heavy foil pack.  You had to go into a closet to change the film in the dark. The film was advanced by turning a knob until the next frame number showed in a little window.  A great little camera.

Kodachrome was the standard for color film, the film against which all other film was compared.
Kodak also pioneered the first digital SLRs, based on a Nikon body.  My first digital camera was a Kodak DC260, in 1998. The company I now work for as a portrait photographer was once Kodak's largest customer.  Now we shoot only digital

I know some folks who still use  film - mostly large-format photographers.  Filmosaurs.  I used 35mm film cameras for years.  Although I occasionally used Kodak Ektachrome or  Kodachrome 64, my film of choice was Fujifilm Provia.   When I switched to digital in 2004, I finished the roll in my film camera and I've never used film again.

These images were captured on film.  I offer them as a tribute to Kodak and the passing of an era.

Mama don't take my Kodachrome away.

A Dolphin Moon

Redux from January, 2010

I had planned this shoot for several weeks. January 13, the moon would rise at 6:03a.m., 119 degrees azimuth. It would be about as close to the lighthouse as it would ever get, when viewed from the most westerly sandbar under the east end of the most westerly bridge on the causeway.

The temperature was in the 30s, but the wind was almost calm. I got the gear out of the car and put the lens on the tripod and the camera on the lens. Put on the vest, grabbed my McDonald's coffee, hefted the rig over my shoulder and started walking alongside the bridge. No moon yet. It was dark but I could see that there were low clouds on the horizon. I looked at my watch - just about time. I should start seeing the crescent any minute. As I reached my destination, still no moon. I should be seeing it. I set up the tripod at the edge of the water, pointed the lens towards the lighthouse, and tried to level the camera. Too dark to see the bubble, so I fished out the little light that says "Grandpa" that David had given me for Christmas. It's single little LED seemed awfully bright. I leveled the camera and attached the shutter release cable.

Oh!  There it is!  The moon had risen fully above the layer of hazy cloud. I took a shot. Didn't even check the settings. A 30 second exposure. I knew I needed a much shorter exposure time to keep the moon from smearing as it moved. I composed, made a few test shots. Managed to get it down to five seconds. Too dark. More adjustments. The moon sped along its rising path.

Before I knew it, it was too high to keep it in a horizontal frame. Recomposed to vertical for a few more futile exposures. Changed from the 300mm lens to the 70-200 zoom. Composed a few more horizontal frames with the zoom lens. The moon seemed so small through the shorter lens as it continued its relentless climb into the brightening sky.

As I walked back towards the car, I realized how cold my hands were. I had been completely oblivious to my old nemesis, the cold. The buildings that had been behind the island slid along the horizon with me as I walked. The light in the sky had gained some character. I made some unplanned pictures with the 70-200. 

As I made my final exposure, a pod of dolphins started rolling out in the bay. They were way too far out for the 200, but I popped off a few anyway. I just stood there and watched them for a few minutes until they moved out of sight. It's always good to see dolphins.

First Quarter

I like to make photographs with the moon as an element – usually the moon of morning, the full moon setting or the waning crescent rising. A phenomenon that accompanies those days near the new moon or the full moon is low tide near dawn and dusk. There’s no moon near the horizon when there’s a high tide at sunrise.

I've attempted to photograph this driftwood on Lover’s Key several times over the past year or two. It’s a tough situation because the beach faces west and the light doesn’t reach the driftwood from behind the beach until well after sunrise. It would be helpful if there are clouds in the western sky, made dramatic by the light from the sun rising in the east. (I really should give it a try at sunset, but it just never seems to happen. I am by habit an early morning photographer. And I'm not enamored of crowded afternoon beaches.) To make the image in my mind’s eye, I needed a high tide.

Last Saturday, the moon was at first quarter and the high tide occurred just before sunrise. So I went to Lovers Key to give this driftwood another try. As I walked along the water's edge of Big Carlos Pass towards the beach, the sky didn't seem promising. The half moon peered down at me from a nearly clear sky. But as I rounded the point onto the beach at the mouth of the pass, I could see the faintest wisps in the west. Maybe Mother Nature would smile at me this morning. Imperceptibly, but somehow almost suddenly, the clouds began to gain character. Their writhing twisting shapes began to echo that of the gnarled wood. Working the composition with the ultra-wide 12mm lens with its 122° field of view, I realized that not only could I capture the high clouds moving in to cover the sky but the half moon, too. When the moon peeked between the fingers of cloud hiding its face, I made my picture.

Up until now I’ve only shown this photograph to a couple of civilians, both of whom pointed and exclaimed, “What’s that?” “Why, it’s the first-quarter moon,” I had to explain. So, what may be seen by some as an inexplicable speck, I see as a bonus. How do you see it?

Here’s a little lunar lexicon oddity I find amusing: At first quarter and third quarter, we see a half moon. Midway between the first and third quarters, the moon is full. Isn’t that when the half moon should occur?

Tropical Storm Alberto

 From the archive

Alberto, the first named storm of the season, raged in the Gulf of Mexico. The sun stayed in bed that morning. This old snag was resurrected from its interment in the beach by the storm-angered surf. Perched precariously on the sand ledge with my back against the sea grapes, I composed this scene, wishing I had a wider lens or a full-frame sensor. I added a neutral density filter and a polarizer to smooth the spindrift and a graduated neutral density filter to brighten the fore in the subdued light. Shortly after I made this ten second exposure, the rain hied me to shelter.