Monday, July 13, 2009

OLD 8x10 NEGS....




Top: Dayton, Nevada July 1982
Bottom: Austin, Texas Feburary 1982


A week or so ago I finished scanning my 4x5" negative archive -- dates from the mid-1970's to last year. Lots and lots of images there. Next on my list is scanning the 8x10" negative archive. There's not as many 8x10 negs as there are 4x5's -- probably on 1/4th as many, but interesting that the 8x10's seem to take more work. Probably because there's just more detail. You can easily see the tones are smoother, and of course, there is no grain ever. Best of all there is sort of a pleasurable melancholy looking by through these images. And a little pang of sadness, too. Strangely there is also a flood of exact memories of place and time. I can remember why I made each of images, most of the time camera and lens used, and even who might have been standing just out of the image taking their own picture. I have rarely every worked alone, and generally travel with someone or several someones. I have never been troubled by others while photographing even to the point of letting others look under my focusing cloth. I guess that's because so many of my images were made during workshops I was teaching or assisting -- the top image was made while I was working as an assistant to Oliver Gagliani at his workshops in Virginia City, NV. Dayton is just down the mountain from Virginia City and I was escorting a group of people from the workshops on an outing. There were several abandoned houses in this old mining town that yielded many images for me. I was struck how this window framed both the inside and outside environments. For the Austin image, I was working by myself -- it was only a few minutes from the house. More to come.

1 comment:

Don and Sher said...

I can imagine the memories it must bring back.

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