OFF IN TEXAS III

Ken "Wolfie" Wolf
Marietta, Indiana 3 August 2012

Traveling through Indiana on state road 252, we were detoured onto a county road that took us through Marietta. As we turned the corner into the town, we were surprised to find an old store with a lot of anti-Bush and pro-Obama proclamations scrawled on various surfaces. While mounting cameras to tripod, a woman who was wet with sweat from mowing her lawn came over. She introduced herself as the deputy mayor of the town, and wanted to know if we knew why her mower wasn't working right. Asked if she had to clean the filter every time she mowed the yard? She said if we were interested in old falling down buildings, the old buggy factory around the corner was something we should check out, and then went back to her mowing task.

Just as I was making the above image of the store's front, Ken "Wolfie" Wolf comes around the corner of the building. Thankfully he was not as crazy as we first thought. He owned the building and he was the author of all the writings. Said it was his building and he could write anything he wanted on it. I asked him why he was carrying that fly swatter. "I hate flies," was all he said. Said that he had had 9 heart attacks, really on six counted, "I don't count the three little one." He added he had been to three doctors -- the first one said it'd be OK to have two beers a day; the second one said the same; so did the third. "By my count, that's 2+2+2 -- that's six beers a day."

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North Grafton, Massachusetts   13 June 2012

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Boylston, MA  13 June 2012

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Spencer, Massachusetts   6 June 2012

Don't ask, I have no idea.  I had actually stopped to make an image of a "bathtub shrine" on the backside of a field nearby, and while I make that image, I felt compelled to turn my camera on this shrine of a different nature.  Thanks to whoever said thanks to Ron.

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West Boylston, Massachusetts   5 June 2012

I have never been one to pass up an intriguing abstract.  I have no idea what the large piece of metal was, or was from.  The softness of the color of the panel (about six foot square) etched with scars of usage, while random, seemed so completely thought out by some intelligentsia.  Not only the interplay of horizontal, vertical, and curving diagonals lines, but I was also drawn to the warm and cool colors complimenting each other.  No way I could pass this by -- just had to wait for a cloudy day.

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Shrewsbury, Massachusetts    1 May 2012

Driving around on a wet and rainy day, and looking expressions of who we are as a people, as a culture is what I do.  My photographic life is so much easier by having a camera that doesn't mind a little water.

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Boylston, Massachusetts  1 May 2012

For the past 10 years or more, I have driven by these two birch trees thinking that one day I should make an image of them.  Somewhere in the back of my mind is a similar image made by John Sexton, but of course, his was in black and white.  I love photographing on wet days because the colors are so intense, and since we've had so little rain this spring, I haven't been out and about much.  However, the weather pattern seems to have changed, and I have been itching put my new medium format digital camera to use.  Wet and calm days are perfect for this kind of image.  Good thing the new camera is waterproof.

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Shrewsbury, Massachusett   1 May 2012

Homage to Eggleston  -- yes, I know his tricycle was big, shot from a low angle, the houses were distinctly in the background, and they were ranchers (as they say here in New England).  Of course, I couldn't make the same image as Eggleston, but his image quickly came to mind when I drove past this scene.  And while I have titled and tagged this image as being made with my new camera, it was, in fact, made with my Canon 5D2.

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Crystal Park, Worcester, MA 22 April 2012

It has not rained on a day I was free since I bought my new camera. This past Sunday was a day of steady rain, and oh how I love making images when everything is wet. I don't find it all that difficult to work under a big umbrella. As sweet as I may be, I will not melt, and the new camera is waterproof. I had a function to attend later in the day so I left the house about three hours early and just wandered towards my destination. Crystal Park is across Main Street from the main entrance to Clark University (where I teach photography). The basketball courts are towards to end away from the university and I have never driven the road across the back end of the park. I saw the bright orange of the backboard against the gray skies and the new green of the leafing-out trees. It was only when I investigated by walking up the incline towards the courts that I discover the brightly painted "floor." Wet, shiny, and reflective makes for great color images.

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Hardy County, Virginia 4 March 2012

Giant white worms were found throughout the pastures and farms of the Shenandoah Valley. I received word they have infested areas of the west coast, also, but someone down Texas said they've figured a method of gutting them and feeding them to the livestock. Texas folks are resourceful.

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Front Royal, Virginia 3 March 2012

For the first week of March, we were on spring break at my university, and I took advantage to go shooting, but with something different in mind this time. After much searching and researching, I finally found a camera store on the east coast (the only one, btw) that would rent me a Pentax 645D body. They are located in Ashburn, VA, and I took advantage of their rent it for a weekend and pay only a one day rental fee. It has been on my mind to find a way to get into medium format digital for some months now, but with the high price of such machines, I thought it best to rent one before leaping off that financial bridge. The Pentax 645D has been the sleeper in the group which includes Hasselblad, Mamiya, Phase One, and Leica. It has a 40-mega-pixel CCD sensor made by the former Yellow Father (same sensor as in the Leica S-2, btw). The advantage that Pentax offers is they expect you to use their legacy lenses from their 645 film cameras -- currently they only make one lens specifically for the camera, and even legacy lenses from the Pentax 67 system. I have been shooting P-67's since 1995, and am the proud owner of eight lenses from 45mm to 300mm. Since the advent of the 645 film camera, they have made an adapter that allows P-67 lenses to be used on the 645, and this holds true for the 645D, also.

So I had the camera for two-and-a-half days, rainy, snowy, sleety days I might add. Oh, I forgot windy. The first image I shot with it was Ellen eating lunch just after receiving the camera, and was interesting in seeing how well it would perform at 1600 ISO, it's top ISO. I spent lunch time learning the camera which was surprising easy especially when you consider they couldn't find the instruction book. The guy told me just to hold one of the control buttons down and if the front wheel didn't change anything then the back control wheel would. He was right, it was just that easy. Nothing you need to make the camera function is buried in the menu system. One of the truly great things about the camera is the dedicated mirror lock-up knob located on the right side of the lens mount protrusion. One push of the shutter locks the mirror up, next push fires the shutters and returns the mirror to viewing position. How great is that? The only problem is I forgot to change the ISO back to something more reasonable for my next image -- an little, old, green trimmed, white church in the back woods of NW VA. It was literally raining, sleeting, and snowing while I held the umbrella over me and the camera to make the image. I went back to the protection of the raised open hatch of my Pathfinder before I realized my mistake. As I was changing the ISO to 400, the camera announced it no longer had enough charge to continue shooting. Thankfully we had an inverter in the truck where I could plug-in the battery for recharging as we wondered down the road.

Raw files range from about 65-70 megs, and converted out of ACR, they are about 225-230 megs. Dynamic range from the sensor is fully two stops more than my Canon 5D2 -- one more in shadow and at least one more in highlights. Colors are lush without being harsh. Native print size at 300 ppi is 18x24.25 inches. If you don't have a printer that will print 24 inches wide, you'd be wasting your money -- thankfully I have one at school (Epson 7900). Prints are absolutely beautiful. I printed everything at full res, and that's big enough for me ---- for now.

The attached image was shot in Front Royal, VA early Saturday morning (3/3) using my P-67 75mm 4.5 perspective control lens. And while I realize that this quick edit JPEG can in no way express the beautiful tones and detail of this image (I can read the electric meters in the file), it'll give you some idea. Just imagine looking at this image on a piece of 24x30 Epson Exhibition Fiber paper. Yeah, I going to buy one.