MorseBlog

It is interesting to ponder the cycle of creative drive. In the past these lulls in my photography used to concern me as I would wonder if I had come to the end of the road for this activity. However, over time I find that there is a natural cycle, and these low points are part of it. I suppose some part fatigue which is probably a protective mechanism to not get obsessed with something. I haven’t done much serious picture taking since February but really going back to January if you don’t count ‘finishing off a roll’ as real work. In the meantime, I have been printing some back catalog images using lith printing, so it is not like I have not been engaged, merely differently. I also realize that I have made some great lith images (by my own judgement). This is turn fueled or rekindled some work I did this morning.  My First Rekindling On another front I have the pleasure of taking Mollie out for her early morning walks. She gets me up early between 5:...

Last month I made 4x5  contact prints which, until then, I hadn't done in quite a while. I liked the format I made up for 8x10 paper by placing two negatives on one piece of paper and leaving the film rebates in place. Retaining film rebates on images seems to be a recent trend amongst new adopters of film. I suppose it gives the image a badge of authenticity or a nod to the retro nature of the work. So I suppose I have adopted this custom in these images. In any case I like the look so perhaps I am finally trendy! (An alternative format I am considering is to use a piece of 8x12 paper, cut from 16x12 paper, with the prints arranged side by side in landscape orientation.) I used the same test print methodology as in the previous post. This got me to the first print that was pretty close. For the upper low oak image, I used only 16 seconds of the #5 filter as it is very low contrast. For the lower birch image, I used 8 seconds #00 and 16 seconds #5 filter. First Print I decided bot...

Author's Note: This post comes some weeks after the time these photos were taken. I had two undeveloped sheets of color film from this trip and I was waiting until I had accumulated some more to distribute the cost of postage. Alas the weather worsened with a pair of gales blowing though bringing unfavorable conditions for photography. I finally relented last week and sent in the two pieces of film.  Another wonderful morning with Mollie at Holme Fen. Again I chose the location this morning because Mollie enjoys it so much. We went out to the western-most covert. There is a large field there which I wanted to investigate. Also I wanted to check the oaks in that area to see how their color was coming along. We parked near the railway crossing and as I set up the tripod and camera Mollie became fascinated by the trains going by.  We met some nice women in the parking area who were returning from walking their dogs. They had to meet Mollie and Mollie had too meet them too. Then w...

A couple of my recent black and white prints from Holme Fen I decided to contact print. I don't contact print often so my methodology is not refined or honed by practice. I use my enlarger and printing easel and just add a sheet of plain window glass to sandwich the negative to the paper. Since I had two negatives I wanted to print them at once to save some time. I arranged the negatives on a sheet of Ilford MGIV Classic FB paper. A further complication is that I do split grade printing generally and making two test prints simultaneously present a slightly greater challenge as I had to expose for soft and hard filters. I considered just digging out my grade 2 filter but resolved a method to get split grade printing to work.   First I would make the test print with the soft (#00) filter from one direction across both negatives. Then I would make the hard filter (#5) test prints orthogonal to the soft filter intervals by using two black cards to block each strip of exposure incr...

This particular morning was overcast but as Mollie and I drove to Holme Fen there was a light mist in the air and some hope of heavier mist. I headed to a covert I had been to many time before as the forest is more open there. Part of the frustration of woodland photography is how crowded the scene is and the difficulty keeping distracting features like branches and weeds out of the scene. Also the reduction of visual complexity so crucial to a good photo is made more complicated with a jumbled and crowded scene.  Most of the bracken has now browned in this area of the forest. The silver birch leaves are mostly blown out form some gales that blew through about a month ago. Now however the oaks are getting a nice orange/brown palette.  Here in the UK we are having a long period of fall cover, probably one of the longest in a long time. Listening to the radio I had confirmed what I suspected last year and disabused of another notion. The leaves turn color mostly as a result of s...

I took Mollie to Holme Fen again this last week. She enjoys these woods especially much and I go there now for her preference as much as mine. She sprints down the trails and takes in the heady scents of this moist woodland. It seems to bring her more energy.  We were following some fainter trails grown over in some areas with now-brown bracken. She is a short rather sausagy terrier mix so her short legs present a challenge in thick undergrowth. She adapts however and tunnels under where she can but has also innovated a spy-hop where she jumps over the bracken. She leaps over a section with her body nearly vertical and this raises her head and she surveys where to jump next. In this way she can follow the trails deer have left with a series of these spy-hops. As her confidence has grown she enjoys jumping on the springy matted bracken as she romps about the forest.  We carried on down one of these trails for a while not really finding anything photographic. I had my Intrepid 4...

I recently made 4 images of a set of leaves in my village. The colors looked spectacular as I walked Mollie in the morning. So I set off from my house with the Intrepid pre-set and focused for looking at the ground so I would minimize the setup time and fuss in public. I hate photographing, especially large format, with an audience as I feel self-conscious and then have difficulty focusing on the task. Having the camera pre-set and mounted on the tripod slung over my shoulder should minimize my time there.  It turned out to be more troublesome than I thought as the wind was strong and gusty and I had underestimated the degree to which the wind moved the leaves. Indeed minute to minute my entire palette of leaves might change as new ones dropped in and others were scrambled on the ground.  I setup the tripod in an area of leaves. It was difficult to decide a 'composition' as it was just a mat of random leaves. My first photo I took on Fuji Astia. I have a lot of the stuff and i...

In my previous post I introduced a new area of exploration of the idea of using a panoramic camera for intimate landscapes . Here is the second set of images I took the next day resolving to fix some of my of errors and find more subjects again in Holme Fen. I had some success last time as I got an Explore on Flickr with last image of that previous post. Not something I chase but appreciated none-the-less.  Here are three images from the same area as the first post followed by another from some distance away. These were all done with Fuji Velvia 100 film. I think the second and fourth images are somewhat more effective as there is less sky.  The second image I think is effective because the eye is led to the trees in the background. Whereas the third image has the trees in the middle foreground which divide the eye to go left and right of them.  The fourth image does not covey what I felt I saw at the time where the trees in the background made a greater impact on me at t...

For those interested in landscape photography I recommend the online magazine OnLandscape . Published in Scotland and edited by Tim Parkin they produce a very nice monthly edition. I have subscribed for a year now and really enjoy it. It costs £59 a year and arrives promptly every month. Nice color photos from some of the big names and not so big names in landscape photography. I enjoy many of the articles and interviews and especially like getting exposed to different types of landscape work. Every issue grows and challenges my own view of my work which I like.  OnLandscape also has a feature called Subscribers 4×4 Portfolios which gives the opportunity for subscribers to see their work in 'print'. A small biography, some text and the photos and then the hard part... pick four photos. I submitted mine late last year and agonized over which photos and what text to use. It got published in the March issue . I used my Three Wood Lands project as the basis for the submission. It w...

  I have created a video version of my three part blog post about a recent image I printed in the dark room. 

I am now on my third iteration as an exercise of looking at a single negative and finding new ways to express the image. This one like the previous is based on some serendipity during the first image making effort. I found the underexposed images had a different quality. My first take is to make a smaller image placed in the center of a large white area. Since the image is essentially surrounded by white then the whole scene might look like it is imbedded in a snowstorm with a greater feeling of isolation.  Mistaken print I used as a departure from something new. (f32 #5 8 seconds 15x9" on 12x16 Ilford MGFB Classic) For the exposure I want to keep with the hard filter (#5) as I don't want a hint of gray tones in the sky or snow. Bringing the exposure down renders the silhouettes in a grayscale which is what gives the feeling of snow or fog.  My earlier mistaken print indicates #5 at 8 seconds at f32 is about right. However, I want to reduce the image size and place it in a...

In my previous two posts I set about printing a negative I took recently. I call it Mathematical Trees as there is a kind of geometric balance to the image. It has become for me an exciting image. I think in part because it seems to be a milepost in my evolution as a photographer (and also perhaps because I have not felt creatively motivated this past month).  It is a milestone of sorts because I was not out looking for a specific image but it was immediately apparent when I saw the scene that it was a worth capturing. This does not often happen to me but it does happen with increasing frequency. I could capture the photo and composition and then realize it as a print in the darkroom. In the last post a few printing mistakes led me to consider alternative interpretations and so I will explore one of those visions here. The earlier version was a stark almost graphic take on the image. In this one I want to impart some atmosphere by darkening the sky. ...

The Theme The theme of this post is how you can learn from your mistakes and not in the usual sense that you won't repeat them. Rather that there may be some creative serendipity if you contemplate the result rather than condemn it. It is also instructive in how one image may contain multiple versions that may be distinct in terms of the emotion conveyed.  Some of this was born out of some prints I made from a Marloes Sands photo where I played with contrast to get a different feel from the same image.   How it all started... In my previous post about getting back into the darkroom I printed one of the first images I took this year. I it call Mathematical Trees. I printed this on my 6x6 enlarger even though it is a 6x9 negative from my Fuji GSW690iii camera. I found a workable square crop (below) but it didn't do the image justice The copse on the right gets cut off and it is contained completely on the negative and was a vital part of the composition.  The ...