Trying a new film - Foma Retropan 320 Soft.  Foma is made in the Czech Republic.  They have formulated the film to have a soft look.  Grain is noticeable and to me it gives a glow to objects similar to Infra Red film.  I wanted to try this film but couldn’t single rolls but I found 100ft at B and H so that’s what I did.  They recommend using their proprietary Retropan Special developer which I used on the 2nd roll.  I rated it at 400 cuz it’s easier to set some cameras to 400.  I stretched the developing time to 6 min instead of the 4-5 min.

It won’t be my go to film but it has a certain look that can be appealing.

The 1 star gallery is my gallery of photos entered into contests but not purchased.  I am happy that some of my work has been selected to show but it would also be nice if they were purchased.  That being said the 1 star gallery is now showing:

Well we did it…… made the 2002 BMW go 200,000 miles.  It has a lot wrong with it but the butt warmers, radio, clock all work.  We only take it to the garage when at least 5 warning lights are showing!

I’ve needed to get in shape for the Summer’s activities.  My endurance has not been good, my back hurts and I put on too much weight during COVID. Fortunately the solution to all three problems is walking. Everyday I go on a walk somewhere.  I try to get in at least 1 mile but I’m not always successful.   Here’s my latest effort at the Van Bibber Open Space in Arvada, CO

I take a camera with me - today was not very fruitful but I did capture this on the trail

A couple of funny things - first up Matt Goetz the dumb ass congressman 

Next is a portion of a questionnaire that Northwestern sent to me.  I admit I’m from a backwards generation but all this sexual identity has left me in the dust.  So I replied in the only way I know how to:

Easter brought us absolutely glorious weather.  I went for a walk early.  I stopped first at the Tower of Memories

Then it was on to Crown Hill Park.  I did a loop of the lake which is 1.4 miles.

I-25 Shot

Spent Saturday down in Colorado Springs.  I was going to go to the Pioneer Museum and then look around at the old neighborhoods.  But then my brother called saying that they were still in Colorado Springs so we met for lunch at Edelweiss German Restaurant which is always good.

The Pioneer Museum had a special exhibit about the 150 years of Colorado Springs using artifacts for all decades.  I was especially interested in reading about The Cotton Club that was a multi -racial nite club when this wasn’t done.   Fannie Mae Duncan made it happen with her motto of “Everybody Welcome”. 

Old Courthouse converted to the Museum

COS at 150

The Pioneer Museum is located in the old County Courthouse which is an amazing structure.  Here are some of the other exhibits.

Great Bison

One other interesting site in C Springs

From one of my photo friends I learned about a park East of Denver in Aurora dedicated to slain Ukrainian Jews during the first part of WWII.  It’s called Babi Yar.  I thought it would be appropriate on Good Friday to visit the park.

Babi Yar, also spelled Babiy Yar or Baby Yar, large ravine on the northern edge of the city of Kiev in Ukraine, the site of a mass grave of victims, mostly Jews, whom Nazi German SS squads killed between 1941 and 1943. After the initial massacre of Jews, Babi Yar remained in use as an execution site for Soviet prisoners of war and for Roma (Gypsies) as well as for Jews. Soviet accounts after the war speak of 100,000 dead. The true number may never be known. Babi Yar became the symbol of the first stage of killing during the Holocaust and of the massacres by the Einsatzgruppen (German: “deployment groups”)—the mobile killing units.

The German army gained control of Kiev on September 19, 1941. Earlier that year, Adolf Hitler had ordered special SS squads to follow the regular army into the Soviet Union and to exterminate all Jews and Soviet officials. Moreover, a few days after the fall of Kiev, an explosion rocked the German command post in the city, killing many German soldiers and intensifying Nazi outrage toward the Jews, whom they wrongly blamed for the explosion. When SS troops entered the city, the Jews of Kiev were marked for destruction. On September 29 and 30, over a 36-hour period, nearly 34,000 Jews were marched in small groups to the outskirts of the city, stripped naked, and machine-gunned into the ravine, which was immediately covered over, with some of the victims still alive. Over the next two years the mass grave swelled with thousands of other victims, primarily Jews but also including Communist officials and Soviet prisoners of war. As the German armies retreated from the Soviet Union, the Nazis attempted to hide the evidence of the slaughter. Bulldozers were required to reopen the mounds. Bone-crushing machinery was brought to the scene. The bodies were piled on wooden logs, doused with gas and ignited. The flames of the pyres were seen in Kiev. When the work was done, most of the workers, prisoners who had been brought in from a nearby concentration camp, were killed. Under cover of darkness on September 29, 1943, a number of the prisoners attempted to escape, and some 15 survived to tell what they had seen.

The killings were described in detail by eyewitnesses and are vividly depicted in novels by Ilya Ehrenburg (The Storm; 1948) and Anatoly Kuznetsov (Babi Yar: A Documentary in the Form of a Novel; 1967), as well as in firsthand accounts by non-Jewish eyewitnesses in a work entitled “The Good Old Days”: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders (1991; edited by Ernst Klee, Willi Dressen, and Volker Riess).

For 25 years after the war, the Soviet Union barely acknowledged Babi Yar. No memorial marked the site. In 1961, in protest against plans to build a sports stadium on the site, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, then a young Soviet poet, wrote a moving poem, Baby Yar, which begins

No gravestone stands on Baby Yar;

Only coarse earth heaped roughly on the gash:

Such dread comes over me.

A year later the poem was set to music by Dmitry Shostakovich as part of his choral 13th Symphony, first performed in Moscow in December 1962. Both Yevtushenko and Shostakovich were reprimanded for their “cosmopolitanism” by the Soviet authorities, who refused to acknowledge the special Jewish significance of a site where other Soviets had been killed.

A small obelisk was constructed at Babi Yar in 1966. In 1974 a 50-foot (15-metre) memorial statue was finally erected. Identification of the victims was vague; the word Jew was not used. Not until 1991, on the 50th anniversary of the Babi Yar massacres, was the identity of the victims recorded on the monument by the newly independent Ukrainian government.

The Park

A special dinner at Bistro Vendome for Vicki’s birthday happened last nite.  It was also sponsored by Laws Whiskey a distillery here in Denver.  The food was great - typical French cuisine - small portions but each serving was a spectacular creation.  Here’s the menu

Scotch Egg

Lamb Bruschetta

Seared Wild Boar

Apple Galette

We both got a little loopy from all the whiskey - Vicki more so than me.  Here are some other shots

Larimer Square

Unlike the next post ( actually posted before this one) I’ve documented my walk.  Just like the weight scale I have a nervous distrust of the readings.  This walk seemed like a real killer compared to my usual walks which are on the flat.  But here it is in all it’s glory

Late breaking DATA just in…..

I tend to believe my walk was more than 1.1 miles - 1.9 seems about right.  

Front of house

Ferrari Fan

My Street

Dead Squirrel

Fred and his Hay

Little Bus

My dog Arbus

These photos were taken on a 20 min. walk thru my neighborhood.  I had purchased a used camera and needed to take some photos to verify that it worked.  The camera is a bit unusual in that I bought it from someone in Japan and unfortunately it was incorrectly described to me when I bought it.  This is the second time this has happened with a Japanese Ebay purchase - lessen finally learned.  But because it’s a pain to ship it back I decided to keep it.  Anyway it’s a Fujica ( Fujifilm) HD-P which means Heavy Duty - Panorama.  It is water resistant to several meters.  It is all mechanical and it uses zone focusing.  

Anyway - back to the neighborhood - I just took photos of things seen along the way including a dead squirrel, remnants of snow, a truck loaded with hay - the owner Fred and I talked for a bit.  He has 30 head of cattle in San Luis, Colorado - I’ve never been there but it’s the oldest continuously settled town in Colorado.  I will have to put it on the bucket list of places to go.

Today the @librarycongress librarian Carla Hayden named ‘Bright Size Life’ among 25 selections as audio treasures worthy of preservation for all time based on their cultural, historical or aesthetic importance in the nation’s recorded sound heritage. #NatRecRegistry

“The National Recording Registry will preserve our history through these vibrant recordings of music and voices that have reflected our humanity and shaped our culture from the past 143 years,” Hayden said. “We received about 900 public nominations this year for recordings to add to the registry, and we welcome the public’s input as the Library of Congress and its partners preserve the diverse sounds of history and culture.”

The recordings most recently selected for the National Recording Registry bring the number of titles on the registry to 575, representing a small portion of the national library’s vast recorded sound collection of nearly 3 million items.

I have my brother Al Nitka to thank for introducing me to Pat Metheny who I’ve listened to ever since.  This album came out in March, 1976 - right before I graduated college.  I think it wasn’t until Winter of ‘76 that I went to a concert of his in Denver with Al.   I thought that Metheny was European because his label ECM is German.  It took a few years before I realized that he’s from Missouri !   Here is a clip from Beyond the Missouri Sky - a real gem

Ran across two connections to Central New York .  The first one is a photo made by David Plowden of the Main Street in Cazenovia, NY.  A street well know to anyone who has been to ‘Caz’

The 2nd one was a discovery of female photographer that was born in Syracuse in the 19th century but went onto fame in the 20th century.  I had never heard of her but she was a very remarkable person.  Therese Bonney

This video shot with the Insta360 body cam.  Very nice system they have put together.  This was shot on the walk around the lake of Crown Hill Park

Ricoh RZ 1050 - I purchased this from Blue Moon Camera as ‘new old stock’ which means the camera is new but it’s from old stock - usually not being produced anymore.  This one has that 90’s look of a crappy plastic designed for a forgotten style.  While that may be true it does have a lot of nice features.  Consumer Alert: do not ever buy this camera.  I just got the negatives back and while there were some useful images the hit rate was really bad.  It can’t focus worth a damn for anything closer than about 6 to 8 feet.  Several of the negatives had side to side scratch - don’t know if it was the camera of the developer who is rather sketchy or should I say scratchy?  I can’t really use this camera because I will never know what I’m gonna get.  I did better with the Harman all plastic point and pray camera.  At least I got 2 rolls of film and the camera for ~$25.

Went to Red Line Gallery yesterday to take some stills for the Denver Month of Photography.  My new iPhone said it could make a movie for me so I let it.  

So March is the Month of Photography here in Denver which is sponsored in part by the Colorado Photographic Arts Center.  As a volunteer I was sent to photograph the RedLine Contemporary Art Center.  Not very difficult - take a few pictures then scram!. Unlike a lot of galleries this place is huge.  Here are some of the photos

SPECIAL NOTE. - this blog entry was from over a year ago that somehow never got published.  I am publishing it now to show how things can change.  I originally took this photograph in April, 2000 at a garage sale.  I liked the sentiment it expressed as everyone has at one time or another said they’d like to be in charge and things would be different.

Fast forward to 2021 and this amongst a few other Dr. Seuss books have been decommissioned but the Dr. Seuss Foundation - they weren’t selling well and there were distinct racist overtones in the book.  The book was NOT banned as I erroneously posted to Instagram but taken out of circulation.  I am not sure how I feel about this.  How are people in the future gonna know that this type of publishing was acceptable into the 21st century?

This was my entry into CPAC ( Colorado Photographic Arts Center) members show.  I was selected so I felt like I had won even though I didn’t.  Only one photo sold so I shouldn’t feel bad about not selling my photo.  To be truthful I spent too much on the framing and therefore if I sold it I would be a -$50.  Not selling means I get to keep it.

I just scanned this one in again today ( roll 377) and it was shot on a high end point and shoot - Hexar with 35/2 lens.  Just shows what you can do with a good point and shoot.  

Awhile back I wrote about the Rocky Flats Nuclear Plant specifically THE INFINITY ROOM.  The Infinity Room ( room 141 within Building 771) was so contaminated with Plutonium that the Geiger counter needles all pegged at infinity.  I have since learned that Building 771 that contained Rom 141 ( Infinity Room) was decommissioned and NOT left in place.  I was under the impression that Room 141 was left behind so I am glad to get the facts.  At one point Building 771 was considered the most dangerous enclosure in the world.  Now I would think the Chernobyl Sarcophagus wins that title.  All this being said I still consider Rocky Flats to be dangerous if this and future generation forget what lies in the dirt below the surface.

Building 771 after the 1957 Fire

Wall of Room 141 being dismantled

Worker suiting up to go into Room 141