Well, while working at the photo center last night, one of the folks there (thank you Ish!!!) said she’d seen my work! Wow. It was up! And it was actually in a place people would see (ie, not a park and ride in covington or some out of the way place)! It’s on the 26/28 bus route, at Dexter and Denny (on dexter, going north, on the west side) a hundred feet or so from Winston Wachter Gallery. Wow. Not only accessible, but really public, too!

I had to stop by of course, on my way home! Sorry for the dark photos, it was night after all! So! It’s official! I’m naow a public artist and can add that accolade to my CV! Oh, and I’m turning 40 tomorrow, so what a great birthday present, eh?

I love quite a few of the images I’ve taken for this series, but to be honest, I only have about 7-8 really solid pieces and have always wanted to push and expand the series further. This upcoming show seems like a great opportunity to do just that!

Two weeks ago I took a day off and the whole family, John, both cats, and I, went down to Oregon for 3 days so I could photograph. It was a difficult trip. It was wet. Very wet. My camera got rained on really hard. My lens was fogging up (on the inside!). Then the rain got into the viewfinder (which is at the top on the Hasselblad camera I use), the wet got in between the sandwiched glass plates, and became impossible to see through. And then the landscape itself was not cooperating.

The beach was so flat and straight as if with a level. I rely on natural curves to make the edge of the waves take on interesting undulations. Instead, the waves rolled in in a straight line to infinity, and it was extremely uninteresting looking to say the least.

I didn’t get very many good images except this one. I may have two or three other salvageable images, but nothing with a “wow” factor. Again, not yet color-corrected:

Oregon Dunes, April 2011

I still have 3 weekends before submissions are due. I think I’ll have to do a day trip out to Ocean Shores or Long Beach to take a few more rolls. That’s an easy day trip, 5-6 hours of driving.

I have a few more I’ll be working on from that time period, too. Not sure I’m totally in love with the wet-mount scanning method (glass plate on a flatbed scanner, squirt an alcohol-based liquid, place your film into it, cover with more liquid, then cover with a sheet of clear virgin plastic to seal, rub out the bubbles, then scan). This is my first expeienced with it. At least it gets rid of the nasty newton rings I grapple with on my scanner at home (Nikon 9000 with a $300 glass plate negative holder, grr). I’m not fully convinced the wet-mounting is getting the grain in the film, have to do a print test too.

Anyway, here’s one of the best landscapes from the shoot (not yet color corrected or cleaned up much at all):

I wanted to start out with one of my very favorite images:

With so little compositionally to work with, the cloud cover and the way sunlight hit the grass becomes exceedingly important. I took 3 of this image – one with full sun, partial sun, and very little sun (above), where it only hits the hill in the distance. This one had the most punch. I can’t wait to print this large!

After going over the digital images of the red silo from my previous post, I am surprised I only took 3 images total of the red barn. One overview from normal height (not posted) - it looked a little boring with a flat field of yellow grain, and a little red building plopped on the horizon. I’ll show two side by side of the camera within the grainfield. These definitely had a lot more visual interest, with the blur/focus and the undefined horizon line. I think I know whichI like better, but let me know which you think is more successful:

More to come! I still have 4+ more rolls of film to show off plus the Holga (currently being processed).

Outrunning the thunderstorms and heavy rain, coming southward from the Glacier National Park. And yes, the breezes were amazing!

Day 3, somewhere in farmland country. Found this perfect red grain silo. Had to (carefully) go through the wheat field far enough to get towards more towards the front (and get the perfect three quarter view). Notice the amazing fluffy clouds. The perfect melding of sun, scenery, and clouds. The only bad part? The biting flies and mosquitos that bit me all over. Ugh, I’m still scratching. We all must suffer for art, I guess. I have high hopes for the film versions of this.

I also took 1 roll of Holga on some of the images. It hasn’t been the best camera for me, so wish me luck with those!

Looking forward to a big Montana steak, long hot sunny days, (and the occasional thunderstorm, which is supposed to happen), and who knows what?!

I’ll be going along the Rocky Mountain Front (on the east side, from Helena and north), and up to the Sweet Grass Hills, which is right up by the Canadian border.

Hope to have some tidbits to show you all!

This is immediately under a stop sign. Notice how far away it looks? I know this does wide-angle images, but I’m not yet used to how much that really is. Good to know that direct sun flares aren’t too awful…

This is one of the few sunflower photos from my p-patch that came out well. The rest are a bit too blurry due to the wind. With a 6-8 second exposure for direct sun, that’s a lot of blur! This was in shadow and for some reason less windy, so a longer exposure didn’t do too badly. The background was icky, so I cut it down a bit.

Overall, not sure I’m fully thrilled with the results. Still working on it.

Found a deserted group of barns, far from any road. Luckily my truck was up to the task. It was nice to explore, and photograph without worrying about someone driving by to call us tresspassers. Red green and blue, the primary colors of landscape photography!

Another favorite spot. This barn was tucked behind a stand of trees, so it was also hidden from the road. It had the most wonderful scrubby skeletal trees and shrubs with this red and orange lichen all over it (you can see bits of it in the foreground scrub). Unfortunately, I think I may have metered wrong with my polarizing filter, so it came out really really dark. I did some very quick curve adjustments, but have to tone down the black a bit I think. I may also remove the fat/fuzzy/blurry shrubby thing in the middle of the right side. It’s really really distracting. Maybe the intense darkness goes with the skeletal and abandonned feeling. I may tweek that a bit more in photoshop to get away from a “normal” exposure.

My FAVORITE part of the trip was at the very end – a magical hill of brown farm dirt. I knew it was gold when I drove by. Luckily it all came together. This will look nice as a large 20″ print. I had high hopes, so I took a bunch of similar shots, but of course, the first one was my favorite. In others, I had the dirt more towards a center horizon line, and then I tried to cut out the bright white clouds on the far right, but this was the best of the group I think. I love the emptiness!