So with a minimum of knowledge I’ve thrown caution to the wind and ‘minted’ my first NFT (Non Fungible Token).  It is up for sale for $100 - You can buy this picture.  Sell or trade it.  I still own the copyright but you would be able to sell it.

Conventional wisdom is that when doing an experiment you should  only have one variable - this has never stopped me from having multiple variables.  In this case I was trying Ilford XP2 which is a Black and White C41 film ( think color film) developed in B and W chemicals.  I used my Leica SL film camera - herein is the problem.  The Leica CL takes the 1.35 v Mercury laden 625 battery which is no longer manufactured.  So the workarounds include: using a Wein cell which is activated by exposure to the air, using the MR9 adapter which takes a 386 battery that you put into the adapter and then the whole thing goes into the CL, and finally there is the option of having a technician change the circuitry of the CL to take a 1.5 v battery.

I went with the Wein cell and that did not work very well - not sure why.  I had exposures all over the place.  The CL would occasionally get the correct exposure.  The problem with the CL is the battery is installed inside the camera was you are loading the film so if mid-roll you need to change the battery you are out of luck.  I also learned that certain Lens Hoods make the split image focusing not as crisp as it should be.

Now onto the XP2 in BW chemical.  It does work.  My negatives were either too light or too dense because of the battery issue and so I don’t think what I got is a fair estimate.  I’m gonna try it again.  Using XP2 in either C41 or Hc110 offers a lot of flexibility when shooting BW.  You can send it off to be developed ( C41) or develop it yourself.

Forget what you think you know about the ‘nanny photography’, Vivian Maier.  This new book is well researched and sets asides all the myths and untruths about this amazing photographer.  

- She was a hoarder which only came out later in life

- Hoarding included her photography - she was a complete unknown because she hoarded her photography

- Because she collected all sorts of things she had huge storage bills which she neglected to pay and that’s why her stuff was seen by the outside world

- She was Phil Donahue’s nanny for awhile

- Rarely did she print her own pictures - many rolls were left undeveloped

- Retrospective psychological analysis ( always a bit of a reach) suggests she also had a personality disorder

Described as the worst wildfire in the history of Colorado.  Over 600 homes and apartments destroyed and thousands evacuated.  Yesterday afternoon residents of the front range were being bombarded by warnings of a severe winter storm approaching.  Then high winds hit the area around Boulder.  This is not unusual but the  ferocity of the winds ( 105-110 mph),  bone dry landscape and one downed power line was all it took to set things into motion.  24 hours later we have several inches of snow on the ground ! I have posted here some photos and video.  Please consider helping those who have been devastated by this fire

https://www.commfound.org/grants/get-grant/Boulder-County-Wildfire-Fund

Views from St. Anthony North

The smoke plume caught on weather radar

Dave Alvin’s rendition of Bob Dylans Highway 61 Revisited - 

Robert Adams is an internationally recognized photographer that I’ve had an interest in for several years.  When first introduced to him I was not at all impressed with his photography.  It was only looking at more of his portfolio that I fell in love with his offerings.  This is what one website says about him:

Robert Adams has photographed the landscape of the American West for more than forty years, particularly in California, Colorado and Oregon. His vision is inspired by his joy in nature’s inherent beauty, yet tempered by his dismay at its exploitation and degradation. Adams uses photography to express his love for the landscape and to understand how urban and industrial growth have changed it, all the while insisting that beauty in the world has not been entirely eclipsed. 

Adams was born in New Jersey in 1937 and raised in the suburbs of Denver, Colorado. He moved to Southern California in 1956 to attend the University of Redlands. He chose to major in English literature and went on to earn a Ph.D. in that subject at the University of Southern California in 1965.

When Adams returned to Colorado to begin what he anticipated would be a career in teaching, he was dismayed by the changes he saw in the landscape. He bought a 35-mm camera, taught himself the fundamentals of photography, and began making pictures infused with a love for the geography of his home state. 

Adams’s visual education came in part through the work of photographers who had preceded him in the West a century before, especially those of Timothy O’Sullivan, William Henry Jackson, and Carleton Watkins. Their work, together with that of Lewis Hine, Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange, and Ansel Adams–who often merged their social concerns with aesthetic ones–helped inspire Adams’s style: a spare formalism coupled with emotional depth. 

It was this image above in particular that got me interested in Adams - it was shot in Colorado Springs where I grew up.  When I saw that it immediately resonated with me.  This suburban image is so typical of the Colorado Springs that I grew up in. I the discovered that Adams grew up in Wheat Ridge where I live and in fact one of his photos that is now in the Yale University Art Collection is of a house just up the street

R. Adams Photo

My Photo

Other photos taken in and around Wheat Ridge are displayed here.  Some are going for $18,000+ in galleries

No place is Boring, if you have had a goods nite sleep and a pocket full of undeveloped film - Robert Adams

Leonid and Friends doing “My Old School” by Steely Dan - an exact cover - it’s great

EARLY on I-70

Well I’m going back to Kansas to work part time.  This time to Goodland and Atwood in the NorthWest corner of the state.  Here are some additional images from the trip I took today

Flagler, CO

Today I’m showing shots from the Bronica ETRs 645 this time with the 40/4 wide angle lens.

Finally broke down and got a Medium Format SLR camera - As much as I would like to have a Hassleblad - they are still too expensive.  I got this unit with lens, back and AE finder for quite a bit less than $1000.  It’s a 645 format so there’s 16 images per roll.  This camera’s native layout is Horizontal whereas my Bronica 645 RF is Vertical so it’s nice to have a choice.  Additionally with the ETRSi I can load a 2nd film into a 2nd back and interchange mid roll which you can’t do with many cameras.  

NO I’m not talking about me although I am 67 years old - so is Godzilla as of this month ( November 1954 the first Gojira movie was released). I’m talking about the venerable Leica IIIf that I just bought and refurbished

Here’s a recent article from Petapixel about the camera.  I’ve had several of these cameras in my photography life.  For some reason I keep selling them - not sure why.  They are small, pocketable and can still be used with some rather new lenses made by Cosina.  I have purchased a few Russian lenses for like $30 that do ok if you’re into cheap.  Here are some pictures made with this camera

Icon VW

Really BIG Dawg

1 of a kind paint color

Another Saturday , another AVANTS get together.  This time at Black Mountain Motorworks.  They offer secure air conditioned storage for high end vehicles.  They have a kitchen , sitting area and small conference room on the 2nd floor so it’s like a shared ‘man-cave’.  The VW featured is a resto-mod from ICON.  The exterior and interior have been for the most part left stock.  Engine , running gear and electrics have all been upgraded.  Look at this YouTube video to see what was done to it.

I am a subscriber to Frames, the magazine and one of their frequent contributors is W. Scott Olsen who teaches at Concordia College in Moorehead, MN.  His recent contribution was about doing photography from a moving train ( sometimes it’s stopped because…. just because).  This reminded me of a trip that my family took in 1999 from Syracuse to Santa Fe.  We then traveled by car up to Colorado Springs.  We came home by train out of the old Union Station in Denver.

This last Saturday went to the Avants sponsored event at Rev Hard Motors that specialize in hard to get foreign cars and especially JDM ( Japanese Domestic Manufacture) cars like the Nissan R32.  Think Fast and Furious.  It was interesting to see all their cars.  They have a diesel powered Hilux which is basically a Toyota Forerunner but with a Diesel engine.

Sunday we attended the Friend, Family event outside of Fairplay, Colorado for the Rocky Mountain Land Library.  It was awesome.  The mission is to preserve books about the West - books are stored in their Globeville ( Denver) warehouse and then brought up to the Buffalo Peaks Ranch for use in various ways.  The goal will hopefully to be a lending library for Park County.  Other ideas that are percolating would be a Residential Library where people  could come in stay for a week or so and read to their heart’s content.

The lay out of the Ranch

Enactors

Marie from France

Jeff Lee

Some of the Musicians

Even a 4 x 5 view camera was spotted

Fairplay - weird as ever

Jeff and Anne Lee are the organizers of the Land Library and both are  fun people to talk to.  They arranged with the Park County Creative Alliance to host this event.  There were artists present to teach, music, and even a group of enactors showing what ranch life was like.

There’s a great NY Times article about one of my favorite photographers.  Talks about aspects of his art that I never knew about.  

This is an example of his ground breaking photography and is instantly identifiable as a Sugimoto - no one has dared copy his style because it’s so unique.

Scammers for a fee can ban anyone you want and can for a larger fee get banned accounts back on line.  This is not good for those of us that think of IG as a stable platform.  It is NOT.  What it is , is a free platform owned and operated by Facebook and if this isn’t enough to get you thinking then nothing will.  I don’t as of yet know of an alternative.  I have over 2000 posts on IG.  If it went away tomorrow or I had to cancel IG and FB I would still be alive and doing photography.  That being said IG is a source of motivation, inspiration and entertainment.  

I came across this video about the special nature of photo books.  This combined with some ominous news about Instagram if your a creative photographer.  The bosses at Facebook who run Instagram are saying that this platform will no longer be about photographs but rather commerce and video.  I don’t know what will happen to IG - I participate pretty much everyday.  Will I be sad if it stops being a place to see great photography?  Yes, of course but these “free’ platforms carry the risk of them going broke, going away or going for the money ( yours mostly).  

This is where the photo book comes in, a tool to preserve your creativity, pass down to future generations and not subject to some moron at Facebook.  

MAKE a Photo book is the theme!

These two losers voted against House Bill HR 2497 to establish Camp Amache in Southern Colorado as a unit of the National Park Service.  This camp located outside of Granada, Colorado was site of a WWII Japanese Internment camp.  

The full bill reads as follows:

Amache National Historic Site Act

This bill establishes the Amache National Historic Site in Colorado as a unit of the National Park System to preserve, protect, and interpret for the benefit of present and future generations resources associated with the incarceration of civilians of Japanese ancestry during World War II at Amache, also known as the Granada Relocation Center, and the military service of incarcerees at the Granada Relocation Center.

The National Historic Site shall not be established until the date on which the Department of the Interior determines that a sufficient quantity of land or interests in land has been acquired to constitute a manageable park unit.

After Interior makes such a determination, it shall publish in the Federal Register notice of the establishment of the historic site. 

Interior may acquire by donation, purchase, or exchange any land or interests in land located within the boundary of the Camp Amache National Historic Landmark.

Any acquired lands or interests in land shall be included within the boundary of the historic site. 

Interior must prepare a general management plan for the historic site. 

Interior may enter into agreements with 

• public or private entities to establish and operate facilities outside of the exterior boundary of the historic site for administration, visitor services, and curation of personal property; and
• other public or private entities to carry out this bill.

Petapixel.com had this on their website today and is an absolutely fantastic video editorial about what is really important in this age - Alex Kilbee argues that it’s NOT the number of Instagram likes.  He wants us to go back to the first days of our photography experience and rekindle that joy and passion.  His brilliant example is that of Vivian Maier who is arguably one of the best photographers of the 20th century.  And yet were it not a fluke of discovery no one would have known about her.  She absolutely had no desire to show her work despite it’s absolute brilliance.  Did this make her less of a photographer?  I think not and that’s the whole point.