MorseBlog

As part of my project to make a story book , I have a vague idea of including at least one print from the black and white photos my brother took. He used a Hasselblad with two film backs so he captured black and white as well as color images.  Conceptually I thought perhaps a hand colored print would be way of doing this. My grandmother often hand tinted photos my grandfather took and I have experimented at different times both oil tints and colored pencils . Pencils offer more control and are less messy. After my first attempt with a simple cheap pencil set I bought a larger set. Some research showed these were good so I bought the set. I have starting printing on Ilford MG ART 300 paper which is 100 percent cotton rag paper like water color paper. It is expensive but I usually like the results. For hand coloring with pencils it has a great advantage of having some real 'tooth' where even FB matte paper has some difficulty getting the pencils to transfer color. I chos...

I have done a small amount of different kinds of books. Some of the ones I did with Blurb can be found on the right hand column of the blog. I have also bound and cased in my own photo book from scratch. This entailed hand sewing the pages together, gluing in C-prints of my photos, casing in the book and wrapping it in book binder's leather. I was please for my first attempt though I picked the project up and dropped it over the years so it probably took 4 years to finish! So daunted I felt at various phases. Never-the-less a valuable experience. I also made a book from a text block I bought and then cased it in myself. I describe the process here . Another satisfying project that ended up as a gift. More recently I self-published a long story about a river trip with my brother. I had a good response to this and I have been in the process of editing it to make it a better story with the help of my cousin who used to be a book editor. This last project led me to revise what st...

Just returned from holidays on Lake Pend Oreille Idaho. My dad and his wife live on the lake in the summer. It is very scenic and relaxing but I have found it a challenging subject to get good dramatic photos of. There are two reasons. The lake is surrounded by hills and mountains and as such golden hour is not very golden. The light is eclipsed by the mountains before it has a chance to sink through the atmosphere and eliminate the lake, shore or mountains. The second reason is sociological as the best time is very close to the dinner hour. Of course the primary purpose of the visit is to spend time with family. Normally we visit in August which is drier but also has had the attendant problem of forest fire smoke some years. We opted for June this to avoid it. This meant we has a little rain but also made for better clouds for photographing. I brought my Fuji G617 6x17 camera and a variety of film (Velvia 100, Portra 400, Portra 160, and Ilford B and W). I managed to get out t...

Introduction The men must have felt some relief as they climbed up out of Separation Canyon. Leaving behind the tension of the expedition and the foreboding of that dark thundering canyon; constantly wet, cold and afraid. Now they move through the forest on the canyon rim and come face-to-face with what must they have thought of as savages. Weaponless and white they were set upon as retribution for some earlier atrocity on the tribe and quickly dispatched.  Thus ended the journey for these men in 1869, some of the first white men to explore the Green and Colorado Rivers, John Wesley Powell and the rest of the expedition had carried on after leaving these men to their fates and completed the journey exiting the Grand Canyon near the Virgin River where Lake Meade is today. Really there was not that much further to go for the three lost men, but at the time nobody knew what was ahead. The perils of being first. Not many years later and many fewer expeditions down the Green ...