Sunday, March 05, 2006

Early Morning on the Water Front - Memorial Day 2005



Odd Photos











A hodge podge collection of photos from the last 18 months.

Neah Bay Road - Fall 1972




These photos were taken off the road to Neah Bay on the north west corner of the Olympic Peninsula on warm fall day in the early 70's. They were all taken with a 200mm Nikkor from a tripod. The two reflections photos were taken on Agfa 64 positive film. These photos were taken as "scrap" for Kathy Kushe, an artist friend who was doing a series of oils on water reflections. I took a shooting trip around the Olympic Peninsula with her in her ancient VW, she had a pentax spotmatic that looked like it had been to Vietnam (the war). Kathy was engaged to a friend and colleague of mine Dave H. who was also an artist but she was "the artist" in our group, graduated top in her class in Illustration from Art Center in LA. Both Dave and Kathy did oils form my photos. I took a three day scrap trip with Dave H. over the North Cascade highway and through the Okangon region east of the mountains. We hit a whole string of ghost towns but my photographic work wasn't much to brag about. Had the memorable experience of walking into Canada where the border was nothing more than a barbwire fence and a cattle guard. I was an illegal alien for about five minutes. Did another scrap trip with one of Kathy's suitors (she had several) from New England. We took her VW junker to Lummi Island in the San Juans. I shot photos but he did sketches. He was a fine arts purist who didn't use photographs. He was making mega bucks doing Andrew Wyeth look alikes and selling them in galleries back east. He was a neurotic obsessive fellow who would take his sketch book with him into a cafe and work while he was having lunch. I was glad when the day was over.

This last photo which I call ghost tree wasn't taken on this trip to Neah Bay. I found the original and it is Kodachrome not Agfa. I never shot to types of film on the same day when I was doing my own work.

Frosted Tree 1979


This photo was taken north of Seattle, somewhere between Everett and Mt Vernon on a winter morning. The lens used was a Nikkor 500mm mirror (CAT) mounted on a harmonically deadened tripod with a lead counter weight attached to the bottom of the post. I did a lot of work with long lenses 200mm, 300mm, 500 Nikkors. I had to purchase a third Nikon body with an electronic shutter to use the mirror since it was fixed at f8 with no half stops. I wasn't partial to electronic gadgets, even built in meters. Used a LunaPro with a spot attachment. Also had a Sekonic L428 for doing incident readings. But I soon discovered you were better off using the through the lens metering with long lenses because the light transmission issues could cause you a lot of grief. The first time I went out with the Nikkor 300mm f4.5 I came home with a lot of underexposed work.