Tag Archives: photography

Teaching, Statuary, Augusta Memorial Park, Waynesboro, Virginia, April 9, 2013

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Statuary, Augusta Memorial Park, Waynesboro, Virginia, April 9,

Of course, I would like to post commissioned work on this blog, but, alas, as regards the above, I was merely a passenger on someone else’s trip yesterday (see “Statuary, Augusta Memorial Park, Waynesboro, Virginia, April 9, 2013”).

My work has a reliably luminous quality these days, and for that, many thanks to Nikon glass and Adobe software.

Composition: sturdy, formal (most of the time), focused.

Luck: unbelievably good, although I am one of those who believe there is no bad light — in fact, as long as there’s light, there’s visual atmosphere.  Perhaps with what I call “response photography” — the photographer as traveler through an environment — atmosphere x subject x depth-of-field x frame becomes the photograph, and atmosphere itself I interpret as location x lighting extant or lighting design.  That’s why in “constructed photography” — the photographer as producer who imports into a frame the elements of his work — the determination of mise-en-scene (everything in the scene, visual and intellectual) leans so heavily on building a set and lighting it or discovering a location and working with season and day to construct a moment for recording fit to concept.

Back to luck: if you go out to a garden to shoot flowers and encounter heavy gusts, you might be unlucky.  Of course, if you go out without intention other than to find something lovely or worth the film — these days, editing time at the computer — and you catch long colorful stems trembling in the light and blurring here and there at lower speeds, well, you might be lucky after all.

Be all that as that may be, thanks to my friend, I had a good day afield and at times lost among memorials and their elegiac and familiar figures and encouragements.

Augusta Memorial Park, Waynesboro, Virginia, April 9, 2013

In Inventory 3-25-13

Posted by commart on

I don’t know if I like defects.

I know I don’t like discovering them.

This afternoon’s story unfolded this way:

1. HP’s inks arrived about an hour ago, and, indeed, “Bertha” (infamous behemoth of a B9180 ink jet unit) needed her cyan; powered her up; fed her a full ink cartridge; deleted from the printer’s memory the two earlier jobs on which she stopped for want of her cyan; and started a simple, small job, i.e., the second snow snapshot from the latest post on the more personal blog.

2. Out of paper!  Where did I put the remainder of the Ink Press?  For a while, I couldn’t  find the box, so I rummaged out of the back of a closet a few damaged sheets of Epson Pearl, 11 x 17, and cut that down to 11 x 12, removing some bent corners . . . only to learn that Bertha’s instructions (software) didn’t seem to want me to load an odd-sized paper — and then: the missing package? on top of the printer . . . .

3. Loaded 11 x 14 and ran a print.  Not bad.  A little reddish for a near monotone piece.  So I ran another, an old leaf heavily back lit.

Leaf, Backlit, C&O Canal, Maryland, December 29, 2006

That above came out of the printer noticeably striped.

It made me wonder if I had looked hard enough at my latest prints.

I use a 5,000K CFL for editing (Lacie 320 monitor; Macbeth color charts and other guides; plus I’m “tuned down” about 10 percent or so, and somewhat compromised between ambient interior brightness and print impact — I need a slightly brighter edited “print” to get a good looking real space print for indoor display), but (reminder: I was talking about my office light source), I have it aimed at the ceiling for indirect and dim room lighting (the monitor is everything).

Well . . .

I reversed the CFL bulb (it’s in a workshop reflector), put on the “readers” (1.5x) and looked again.

What I found: light striping and perhaps, in the last few prints, what looks like magenta cartridge misalignment.

One has to really look, up close, magnified, to see this stuff.

Very light, or what I call “faint” artifacts may be ignored — the image impact is such that such have to be pointed out to be “seen”.

And some things may add charm the way a nub or two might a sweater.

Still, I’m not one to send out work with industrial-strength grooves in it.

For the moment, I have half a dozen prints — should they be called “seconds”? — set aside and unlisted.

Of the listed: fine for the wall, but . . . Bertha’s tiring me out.

I’m going to align Bertha’s print heads, run some proofs, and come to a decision about sending her on to my county’s recycling program.

Boutique printing — very limited edition, totally hands-on, also at the mercy of technology or involving some struggle between the artist and the unruliness of the machinery — is not high output lithography.  For some barely visible qualities, some “small shop” artifacts may add to charm.  Such become indicative of a period in a shop’s history.

On the other hand:

I WANT PERFECTION!

Enough said.

* * *

In the order signed:

Black Eyed Susans: 1 – 11×14 Ink Press Luster, 10-1/6 x 12-3/4

Black Eyed Susans:  1- 11×14 Ink Press Luster, 6-1/4×10

Three Susans: 1 – 11×14 Ink Press Luster, 13-11/16 x 9-5/8 slightest banding, invisible head-on

Mumma Farm Outbuilding 1- 11×14 Ink Press Luster 6-3/8 x 9-5/8

Peeling Paint, Mumma Farm Building (first of the three at URL location)- 2 – 11×14 Ink Press Luster, nominal 1/8-inch border, soft

Peeling Paint, Mumma Farm Building (first of the three at URL location) – 2 – 11×14 Ink Press Luster, 8-1/8 x 5-1/16 (soft)

Blue Treetops – 1 – 11 x 14 Ink Press Luster, off-centered 6 x 10-11/16, blurred and textured (very arty)

American Farm Girl: 1 – 11 x 14 Ink Press Luster, no border, slightly stripped, ink droplet, left side.

American Farm Girl: 7 – 11 x 14 Ink Press Luster, bordered 3/4-inch nominal, faint striping, high impact print; some borders smudged.

American Farm Girl: 1 – 11 x 14 Epson Glossy, bordered 3/4-inch nominal, faint striping, some borders smudged.