PIX FOR LIB

Thorndale, Texas -- Jan 1987

REDEMPTION......ROCK, that is....

Imagine my surprise as I drove north along RT 140 to see this sign. What? Move Redemption Rock! Not possible, that thing is a chunk of granite about the size of a 2000 sq. foot house. It's a glacial erratic (meaning a big rock push by glaciers some distance from its point of origin). Redemption Rock is sort of famous in these parts as the place, where in the 17th century when this part of central Massachusetts was considered the wild west, a white woman captive of the Indians was released. You can read all about it here. Ol' Metacom (better known as King Philip in the history books) was involved, of course, as he was in a lot of dealings, and raiding, and killing between the whites and Native Americans in those days. In fact, Ellen even has kin that were knocked off by this dude and his group in a 17-th century Indian raid in Medfield, MA. Yeah, I know, if you look closely at the sign, it says "Future Home of the Redemption Rock Church," but catching the sign out of the corner of my eye as we drove by I on read the part about "Future Home of Redemption Rock...." -- as you can see, the "Church" part has been ripped away. I can never pass this kinda' stuff by.

BACK ROADS - Scenes from the Rural Landscape

With many people posting their new SoMoBoFo projects to here, and with Colin Jago on his blog mentioning my "Road Sides" book, and that I had taken a different route doing this book thing, I thought I should show another book recently completed. All the images in "Back Roads" are scanned black and white negatives shot from 2000 through 2007 on trips west. I have placed examples under the label of "this old place." There are 112 pages in the book of which there are 54 photographs and was completed at the end of March 2008.

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Hammond County, Indiana 2004

I'm leaving for Texas this morning and the Dawg is a bit pissed. How does a blind dog know we are leaving? She just knows. I won't be posting images from the road because I just haven't had the time to get the new lap loaded with photo software and calibrated. And I for sure don't want to post images from the digital camera that haven't been prepared on a non-calibrated system. Doesn't mean I've run out of images, just won't have a stable of them to choose from. We'll be in Central Texas for nine days visiting Ellen's mother, wandering about the rural landscape, and finally to Austin to attend the 40th Anniversary of the Dobie-Paisano Fellowships -- I received a Paisano Fellowship in 1979. Without that fellowship, I would have never left the comfort of the my UTAustin job to venture into the world of "doing my own thing." So, for the next nine days, it's Tex-Mex, BB-Q, Blue Bell, and a few conversations with Margaret and Scott -- some of the more important things I learned during my formative years.

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US Hwy 285, Eddy County, New Mexico 2003

Just above the Texas-New Mexico state line, out on US 285, I came across these signs advertising the wonders of White City. As evidence that things don't change much out where few people live, or for that matter frequent, these old signs along side the highway, reminisenct of the old "Burma Shave" signs, still stand even though flashbulbs haven't been readily available for some 20+years. While White City still exist in Carlsbad, flashbulbs don't and Kodak is fading away like these signs.

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Brewster County, Texas 2003

During January of 2003, along with two other photographers, I spent a couple of weeks in the Big Bend area of Texas. Over the past 25 years or so, I have made many, many trips into that remote desert country. For some reason, in all those years, I had never driven the "North County Road" that takes off TX Hwy 170 between Terlingua and Study Butte and intersects TX Hwy 118 that runs between Alpine and Study Butte. Funny thing, at that northern intersection with the highway, that same road is listed and signed as "South County Road." Go figure. On this particular trip, we found this old fire truck that had obviously been parked for many years at a ranch headquarters entrance road. The desert sun had done many wonderous things to that old truck, one which is represented above. That's the truck's seat back.

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Marlin, Texas 2004

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Socorro County, New Mexico 2005

I am totally sold on Innova's FibraPrint Ultra Smooth Gloss paper printed with my new Epson 3800 printer. For the past 3.5 years, I been printing on my person Epson 2200 and the schools Epson 4000. Color printed on these printers were spectacular on just about any good paper, but only barely acceptable when using QTR RIP to make B&W prints. About 18-months ago, I printed three large 16x20" print area prints with the 4000 onto a roll of 17" Epson Ultra Smooth Fine Art paper. The images were of old pealing and moldy wallpapers. Framed behind glass they looked very good, but still the image seemed to sit on the surface of the paper. While I haven't printed those same images using this new Innova FPUSG, I have printed the above image both on 8.5x11 and 13x19 on the new paper. Any digital print with that many deep tones has always suffered in tonal merger in the lowest tones. Not any longer. Now images printed on this paper have great separation of low tones, brilliant highlights, great mid-tone contrast, and now the image resides in depth below the paper's surface. I can't wait to get some 17x22" Innova FPUSG and print this image again. Actually I will wait, or have to sell into slavery my first born to afford it -- 50 sheets cost about $6.75/sht. That's about a dollar more than Ilford Fiberbased Warmtone 20x24" silver paper. I don't know if the ink used to print a piece of 17x22" paper is the same cost as the chemicals need to process a sheet of 20x24" paper is the same or not. Hell of a lot less messy.

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Socorro County, New Mexico 2005

For those of you who don't get out much, those are flower stalks of the mullen plant. I've heard it called lamb's ear -- large, soft, velvety leaves -- and I've heard it call miner's candle -- very bright yellow flowers at the tip of the flower stalk. The plant has a pretty wide distribution because I've seen it growing here in New England and just about every other state I've traveled through.

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Victor, Colorado 2006

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Vernon, Texas 2006

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Vaughn, New Mexico 2006

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Black painted barn with bird doo, Indiana 2006

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Yeso, New Mexico 2006

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Vernon, Texas 2006

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Kentucky 2007

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Central Missouri 2007

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Douglas County, Washington 2007

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Exterior and interior of an old school house in Tiaban, New Mexico. I have been through that town a dozen or so time in the past twenty years, and have alway wondered what the interior of this building was like. Then heading east after a trip west in 2005, I discovered the building to be empty and open. During past inspections, it had alway been occupied. I marvel at the sparce simplicity and elegance of older interiors. These days people would throw up a steel building with drop ceilings.

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All right, OK, enough of the elevators already(for now). I was looking back over some images I made in 2005 while driving around the country west of Socorro, New Mexico. Stumbled on a old adandoned ranch house down a forest service road that runs along the base of the Magdalena Mountains. I spent parts of several days photographing in and around this old house. The above was in one of the bedrooms and had a strong patch of sunlight hitting the floor causing uneven illumination on this wall. I found a piece of old white painted wall board in the kitchen and placed it leaning on the tripod in the direct sunlight so it would reflect light into the upper part of the image. I'll try to find some the images made by Oliver Gagliani that inspired this one. I was an assistant at Oliver's Virginia City Workshop for seven summers back in the mid-80's.