#96 A Mere Week In The Provincetown Dunes.

 #96  A Mere Week In The Provincetown Dunes.

This week was the major component of Shore Search North, my expedition to explore the surviving manifestations of the maritime culture of  the New England Coast. It can’t be understood without reference to

The Outermost House: A Year of the Life On the Great Beach of Cape Cod.  written by Henry Beston from his time there in 1927.  Various editions exist of this classic.   Here’s one:   ISBN -13: 978-0-8050-7368-3.   When I went to the Dune shack “Fowler,”  I’d not read Beston…I’d been aware of his work for years but had never gotten around to reading it.   Now,  after both experiences,  I realize that I’ve replicated in only one choice, prime week what Beston devoted a year to…coming to a state of peace with the nature of the place and as a result, at least partly,  with myself.

Since Henry Beston did such a wonderful job of describing his time from a view far more knowledgeable than mine about the flora and fauna…are skates fauna??…how can I come off recounting my experience there?  The guy can really write.   Why should I bother ?  except that I’ve promised quite a few regular visitors to this blog that I’d post something about it.  There is something of worth in my perspective that adds to Beston’s… so here is my log from that time…mostly verbatum… and a few pictures from the mass I recorded.  The whole trip yielded half a thousand digipix (6 gigabytes) and eleven rolls of silver analog film.   The editing will take time, but here are a few…   Most of these pictures, with the exception of botanicals where color is really helpful, are from B&W analog film negatives.  It often feels to me like digital rendition is wrong for some subjects and once I realized I was following in Henry Beston’s 1927 footsteps, the picture technology available to him at that time felt more correct for me nowadays.

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The other two components of the trip  were the the working harbors and shore towns of the southern New England Coast and Down East in my old stomping grounds of Maine.  They will become further posts later.

What is that lacy plant in the lower left of each frame ??

Log of Shore Seach North

 

Fowler Duneshack Shore Search North – Field Notes X-scribed

Sun 6 May ’12 7:10am  up

8:30am full gear overhaul and Hot Shower….It’s working this morning !…hallealuia !   trip 615.0

10am  stopped at flea market outside Wellfleet Drive In…didn’t buy anything.

Hi Noon  bought ceremonial marsala at Wellfleet liqueur store, once  Sheehan’s.

12:30 PM exact.  At rendezvous.

1:45pm  Chip and Ann have left.  WX sunny and cool.  I am here.  Noisy helicopter.  Unpacked and rough positioned propane fridge.

4:30pm  took longish walk to orient – went out to Snail Rd. w/hiway barrier, then back past ballast bags, twin posts and Coast Guard ruins…O’Neill  station…took wrong fork and ended up at Thalassa shack.   This was a real workout.   WX willowisps and mares tails.  Need PB&J and then antenna for YB400.

7:32pm Sun under dunes – no cell phone signal here.  2/4 bars at top of dune…called Sarah S. and left message A-OK

7:50pm light lanterns and started fire.

9:12pm  Moonrise over dunes !

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Am in shack on first night, Sun 6 May, 2012.  after good trip.   I’m listening to radio Athens on shortwave. Pain in my right shoulder where the Cochabamba injury was is telling me that somehow I’m carrying the load wrong.  Two places found for B&W film.  Coast Guard ruins and a deep valley in the dunes with a tree whose roots have been uncovered by the shifting sands.  I’m really liking the silence.  I’m now just trying out the computer and how it is to work in this place and setting.  The computer takes 3 1/2 minutes for full boot so the overhead means a relatively long working session is in order.  I’m trying 23:23 minutes this time but will go longer as I determine battery use.  The audio recorder is draining AAA NiMh’s at a too rapid rate for them to last. I have two alkalines for backup. Been thru one Nikon battery pack already.  ( sentance redacted—personal). Time to feed the woodstove.  Cell phone coverage non-existent at the shack but 3/4 at top of dune. I pro’lly don’t have enough food.  I pro’lly need to shift day to dawn patrol so I can see better. Real workout for legs today walking in sugar sand.  I am old for this.  The shack is extremely well found…excesses even of some items, drinking water.  Disposal of plastics is going to be a problem.  Hoping it warms up some.  Ann, the previous resident, went thru a quarter face cord of firewood in the cold week she was here. It’s now fully dark out and I will need to see how well I can navigate around the place at night.  Tonight is a Supermoon, so maybe it will be easy to see once I get outside.  I’m here.   There is work to do and rest to be taken. I think I should call out as all’s well each evening to a different person.   shutting down now.

Mon 7 May ’12  5:46 am  Sunrise.  7:35am up feeling better after a hard night with repeated painful leg cramps.  WX sunny and still.  Wind backed southerly.  Tai chi .  9:00am  short fiddle practice.  Shoulder still bothering me. Tinkered outdoors.  Primed water pump.

10am light camera gear discipline then out to photo valley of the doomed tree and coast guard ruin.

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12:30 back to shack for lunch and rest. Thinking “When Beachplums (Lilacs) Last In the Dooryard Bloomed.  How this place, ecosystem, should speak to me so vividly;  why shouldn’t it be mine as well as the property of those who can financially possess it thru inheritance or sudden riches?  A difference being that I have little need to own it… in fact realize that in SOME sense No One can own it.  I can abide the propertarians but there are limits over which they often step and need curtailment.  23 minutes head down in the sun.

1:30pm copied digipix  and audio notes so far to date to HDD.

4pm out again to photo B&W nature

6:30pm back at shack after discovering actual Snail Road. Cooking beans and sausage and having lime and grog. WX slowly closing in but will try sleeping outside tonite.  4XZ 5420, W1AW 3581, Radio Athens 9420, WCBQ no signal heard on 7415,  C.R.I. 7350 (china) , All India R. 9950,

8:40pm fully dark – no sign of moonrise. R.Exterior de Espanga 6055  R. Nederland in Spanish 6165

10:12pm Moonrise.  Cloudy near horizon, bright stars and a planet visible overhead. – walked out to barrier and arch tree then back and up to the ocean bluff without lights. 10:55pm  bed.

 

Tues 8 May ‘12. 5:42  dawn.   Rain overnight. Sun in clouds…back to bed.

7:45 am.  Up.  Rain. Breakfast.  Lit fire.  Tai chi, short fiddle practice until shoulder pain precluded.  I’m in the shack being a complete wusse about temperature.  I have a fire going.  Shoulder pain  precludes much in the way of enjoyment playing fiddle.  Yesterday was a physically  demanding but productive day.  Today I should concentrate thought a bit on why I’m here…trying to redefine directions…look for prosperity and improvements with what life and health remain. I also need rest and to let go of the frequent concerns of life at 2760 SLV Rd. I still need to think about marketing but more in the line of cooperation with other people who get a cut…like an agency arrangement with Lark.  The week in between return from Maine and Folk College is going to be very busy…but I don’t need to work all that out yet.

9:30am went off on long beach patrol.

1:10pm returned to shack very tired and a bit hungry. – rain started spitting again.  Got my feet wet and tasted the salt of the sea. Blew up the coals of the fire. This stove has wonderous rhythmic sounds as it heats up and expands. Tinkering with the idea of standing watch and watch in six hour watches, which today would mean off from 2pm to 8pm and then on watch from 8pm to 2 am….pro’lly not feasible.  The WX is lifting now and I think my original plan of doing the cameras on the beach may be OK.

2:15PM Breezing up again…a nice sound when all is cozy.

5:15pm took the afternoon off to enjoy the howling of the wind

6:30pm wind still SW, blustery, veering WSW.

8:30pm supper of rice, olives and sausage with tea.  Have read a lot. X-fered files to laptop.  Floor yoga.  Shoulder still painful.

10pm it seems like the shoulder pain returns as a concomitant of trying to do things the old way. Try something new and it abates temporarily – try to go backwards and it returns

This particular fantasy of being the shipwrecked sailor or coast guardsman has charm and is live in my style of luxury here…but what ship is it that is wrecked and where was it bound ?    And now that I know the route out of here to “civilization” what should I do when I get there ??

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Wedn 9 May ’12  2:10 am high winds and trashing, driving rain.  Briefly stopped during dawn hour and then started raining steadily.  6am fully light—rain stopped.  7:30am raining again, hard. – got up lit fire…Tai chi and floor yoga – chopped wood carried water.  Rain intermittent 10 am breakfast.    1 pm Chip and the propane guy are here to hook up propane refrigerator. The heavy question at the moment is WX I could handle a relationship if I found someone who’d be interested and willing.  I’ve spend so much time alone and out of communication with other people that I can’t grok WX someone female half attractive and normal could/would put up with me.  Carrie K. says she thinks I’m ready…but am I ??

(paragraph redacted—personal)

I haven’t enough income to operate effectively — too little to spend — too much to worry about how to save.  Not enough effort toward increasing income.  I do need more income even if it means trading for time.

Was practicing fiddle and will write this battery out while they are working on the tanks.  I’m actually glad to have the rain because it means I have no need to go out on the land today and can just process what I’ve got inside.  If I’m going to switch to being a writer I’ve got to be able to get greater speed, accuracy and endurance with the physical part of writing on the keyboard.  I was conscious this morning that I was doing chop wood, carry water while chopping wood and carrying water.   It was very easy in this circumstance. I noticed that this particular woodstove has an actual rhythmic routine that it goes thru while heating and cooling. I’m thinking quite a bit about the pain in my shoulder.  I’ve fairly sure that it’s mostly mental as it comes and goes with familiar vs. unfamiliar activities…it’s like the pain is trying to tell me what needs change in my life.

Evening shortwave listening.  Wish I’d brought more wire for a better antenna.   Code cypher  groups 4631 khz.  Ship to ship 4840 khz.  Peter Schiff show 5040.  cool music in French 5110.   WBCQ 5450.  Aviation weather   east coast. 5506    Aviation WX Europe 5819.  CW mark space   R. Havana Cuba 6000.  C.R.I.  6020.   Called Lark and David on cell phone to check in.

Thurs 10  May ’12   still raining.  Up at 6:45am  Prep for town trip. Wind has backed to NW.  Leave shack 7:55am  hike out in intermittent rain.

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Arrive at Ove the Volvo at 8:45am  50 minutes.  8:55am Pilgrim Heights, Highland Light,  Mitre Corp site WX too hostile for serious general photography.  10:23am trip miles 691.3 at Newcombe Hollow.  Saw very bedraggled red fox on Gull Pond Rd.  Did I image the race in Newcombe Hollow or did it actually happen ?   I know it actually happened here a half century ago.  ? Why is this unfinished business ? why can’t I leave it forever behind ? I think on Sunday I  will .  11am  Clear Newcombe Hollow after long talk with a young local painter…houses, not canvas.  “They all want to be the last one over the bridge.”  They said that in Maine too.

11:13am  trip 697.5  at Marconi site.  (The references to shortwave radio frequencies and listening result from taking advantage of the quiet, both acoustic and electronic…the same  that attracted Marconi to this area in 1901 to attempt the first transatlantic radio communications from a site in nearby Wellfleet.)

11:43am what I think was the Finast market now appears to be an antique mall.  Yes,  a gal in donut shop’s mom worked there.

Noon.  Finished lunch at Finast site.

12:15  Cruised out Chequessett Neck Rd. looking for the Melcher’s house.  Did not  find.  Perhaps it may be gone.

1:16 pm In P’town…picked up groceries at P’town Stop n Shop  $14.18

2pm ff walked all of Commercial St. P’Town from Coast Guard station to far end of east end, then back via Bradford St.  Few of the art galleries open because not weekend and not yet season.   Looked in all open galleries. Stopped in a Greek pub for a gyro and excellent local red ale,$15.00 w/tip then talked until 5pm with a local photo artist who gets $3K for lesbian centered photo art. Walked up to Pilgrim Monument which was closing and spoke with a British gal who was also taking pictures.  Encountered  Chip on a Segway scooter who invited me to the grand opening of a sushi bar. I went, but it cost me many blocks of walking with already tired, painful knees to go into a cacophony of wall to wall people all so tight packed and noisy I couldn’t cope at all.  I had to walk many blocks back to Ove the Volvo.

7:30pm  started to assault the Snail Road hill #1.  Made it back to the shack at 8:07pm after calling Carrie K. and leaving a message that all was well.  Made poached Spam and daiqueris for supper and cross loaded digipix to laptop harddrive.

Fri 11 May ’12  awake at 6:10am.  Got up at 7am – lots of gear discipline to do today.  Sky clear.  Wind fresh from west

10:30am cleaned up well.  Carried water, chopped wood. Did urgent laundry..  Shot ½ roll of 6cm film near shack.  Early lunch.  General housekeeping.

1:40pm took daypack photo equipment southwest along dune tops.  This harkens back to the coast guard watchtower on Mount Ave.  Bay Head and walking the patrol on the BHIA boardwalk in front of the Bluffs Hotel.  Thinking about navigation in this place where at first  there are no distinct landmarks and gradually you build up a map in the mind.  The first major landmark became the hill that looks down on the shack at one side and into the Valley of the Doomed Tree on the other side.  Then came the mud puddle in the road by the coast guard ruin…then the ballast bags  and the arched tree and so forth until I sort of knew where I was. Now, hiking along the top of the sea bluff dunes I know where these places are even though I can’t see them.

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How weak and full of pain I have become. I will not submit to it.

4:25pm back at the shack.  “The sun is o’er the yardarm.”  I sit on the deck with cheese, crackers, lime and rum…and greenhead deer flies.  Enjoying the sun thru sucker holes in the cloud deck.

6:30pm   I feel like I’ve reached my absolute limit of being alone all the time.  I must find engagement with others.

7:30pm I’m not usually a gushing fan of sunsets but tonight is really rather nice, constantly evolving, changing even after the sun is hull down under the dunes. .

Sat 12 May ’12.  awake at 6:15am up at 7am. WX clear and cold. Light breeze from NW.  Last full day here…weekend population traffic probable. Thinking of what this trip is all about… not recapturing nor reliving the fires of youth but of understanding them and something of why I have declined the position in society that birth family and career might have bestowed.  Even as a teen in Bay Head I didn’t seek a place in the society of those whose families ran the summer colony…had the yachts and flashy cars.  I didn’t understand then the role of the sheer money involved and where it could have come from.  I did choose the company of the locals until it became evident that I couldn’t be part of that either.  Perhaps that means that I’ve always been basically democratic.  I really preferred Mary Sheehan from the liqueur store to the admirals granddaughter.   Dad, with his athletic prowess, golf and whist clubs, brain power and fraternity aspired to the ruling class but knew limits and never forgot or renounced his roots.  Mom was always a shopkeeper.  Her friends were the grocer and baker and the respect she showed the ethnically very different was one of her greatest lessons.  I was the slightly defective late child who was always clueless about class society and my proper place in it.  The summer world I lived in allowed a mix of the demos and the future rulers…Phillis and her CIA Peter…The general’s playgirl daughter  (sentence redacted—personal)    I’m not sure I can reconnect. The key would seem to be my ability to build my own prosperity.  At the moment I can hardly buy my way home, and when I get there I have to sail solo too large a ship.

8:30am  Tai chi and floor yoga.  Breakfast.

11am  back at the shack  after a short patrol to Valley of the Doomed Tree and Coast Guard Ruin.  The coast guard station was Eugene O’Neill’s; he bought it after it was decommissioned by the C.G.

11:20am  a C.G. chopper went out very low, close and fast to check out a small craft off easy soundings…came back right away.  Tide is near dead low.  It will be midtide and making ca. 2pm.  Many bumble bees working this morning.  When home must find and read Henry Beston  “The Outermost House.” 

1pm  lay in sun on deck the treated myself to a long fastidious hair and beard trim.

1:30pm I’m going swimming.

3pm  back from swimming, or, more truthfully a good solid dunk.  The water was too cold to stay in very long but I honored my dad and went in, however briefly.  I was impressed more than ever by the variation of colors in the margin curl as the waves break and recede.  Brought back a few surf clam shells and one gemstone.  I felt I didn’t want to stay too long in the sun to become painfully pink.   I’m sitting in the shade on the deck trying to figure out the strategy of a bumble bee who seems to be on recon flights in this airspace.  Five hawks…no, six….ah, seven, eight are thermal soaring just west of the shack.  Their wing feathers are golden brown, their bodies black.  I wish I had binoculars…left them in the car.   I’m remembering well the heat of feet sinking deep into sugarsand.  Some larger flying critter too fast for me to ID is pursuing that bumble bee who just escaped by only a couple of inches.  A brace of Canada geese just flew by on a vector toward WNW.

3:47 pm Cliff Swallows…even they can briefly thermal.

8pm  enjoyed a long nice chat with Marika, a cardiac surgical assistant from Vancouver BC met on trail while photographing…offered a beer and sat on deck talking until twilight.  She has just started back to P’Town with GPS guidance. Tried to call Lark and Margie Strauss from dunetop but got only answering machines.  I am a bit concerned by intestinal disturbance that gives me turds with the consistency of   [ phrase redacted…you really don’t wanna know]   Alarm set for 6:30 am tomorrow.  Shortwave listening to  9420 — R. Athens.,  3486 — Aviation WX New York, 4331– 4XZ Israeli navy, Haifa,  in morse cypher groups.

9:30pm  went on night patrol out to Snail Rd. and almost got lost on the way back.  Lay on my back  (shoulder still painful)  to look at the stars and was appalled at my ignorance of the night sky.  I’ve forgotten what little of the star atlas I once knew.  Also could not resolve bright stars into point sources either with or without my glasses.  My eyes are going…every star looked like a fuzzy boomerang shape.   The blind photographer salutes the deaf  Beethoven.

10:15pm  back at shack.  6175 – R. Viet Nam,  6195 – BBC news.   BED.

Sunday 13 May ’12  light at 5:35am  up at 6:25am  WX light breeze from west.  High thin overcast

7:30am fine NPR piece on acoustic ecology by Gordon Hempton – full Sunday cleanup.  I’m distressed to discover how crappy my eyes have become.  Last night couldn’t always get my two images to converge and couldn’t  see weak field sky areas at all – Just when the lifelong photographer begins to really learn how visually perceive the world the optical equipment begins to fail.  Also distressed at how weak and low energy the whole body has seemed this week.  I think it may have massively malfunctioned if I hadn’t had the therapeutic rest this place affords.

11am cleanup pretty well complete.  Time for a last trip to the sea.

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2:15pm  back at Ove the Volvo.  Chip turned up on time and we got out handsomely. Anchor hove short for departure at trip 746.2.

2:28 pm trip 753.5 at Mitre site

3:08pm Stopped in Eastham for ice cream.

4pm Stuck in parking lot traffic on RT6  Sagamore bridge down to one lane each way.  Bailed out to Rt6a…not much better. Will need fuel soon.

4:18 pm   trip  808.4 miles.  Stopped for fuel and another wonderful pastrami sandwich at the deli in Sandwich. Gas station out of everything but super premium. Added 3.7 gal $15.10   $8.35 food

6pm  248000.0 absolute miles   trip 847.8

7:16pm  trip 896.7   248050.  in drive at Larks NuHobbiton.   Lark fed bourbon and chef salad.  Yum.  Liniment on shoulder. Called Eve for mothers day.  Crash bed.

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The Valley of the Doomed Tree grabbed me at first sight with its beauty.   The tree itself became a metaphor for my own passing life.  I photographed it again and again from different locations and in differing lights.  Eventually both of us will pass…our roots undercut by inevitable time.

 

As I read Henry Beston after returning home something did occur to me that wasn’t yet an issue when he tarried here in 1927.  The silence and space needed for coming gradually to peace with the nature of the place and with our own spirits is no longer a limitless resource.  I enjoyed this time due to the dedication of those in the P’Town Community Compact and the wisdom of the US Congress in the 1960′s in establishing the Cape Cod National Seashore.   Otherwise, by now, almost the entire Cape would be in private hands and condominimized away from the vast majority of those who could benefit from the experience.   The tragedy of the commons was not an idea lost on Beston who understood the the forests of this place fell to the private axes for lumber, fuel, salt driers and pottery kilns.   With unlimited “development,”  the system will probably never completely recover.  The pressure grows ever more intense with exponential population….perhaps we too shall pass…nature will find its way.

Handmade silver prints of these and other pictures will be for sale to finance further photo expeditions.   I’ll be showing at Keuka Arts Festival next weekend,  9 and 10 June in Penn Yan, NY  for further info:

www.keukaartsfestival.com

Nuff for now…these lots and lots still to do.                                         Next post:  maybe in a couple of weeks,  I’m overwhelmed right now.

 

 

First Flash Report from Shore Search North #95

First Flash Report from Shore Search North  #95

Although WordPress has been my blog host for over two years I’ve never been able to determine how to upload a substantial album of pictures, so I’ve resorted to Picasa, which makes that process easy. This album is a first report from my recent field operations “Shore Search North.”  The pictures are plants that create the shoreside world that I love as a spiritual home.  With thanks to the Provincetown Community Compact, an arts organization,  I got to spend a week in this somewhat luxurious “shack”  in the Provincetown dunes of the Cape Cod National Seashore.

There was once a natural world of the shore before all the amusement parks, ice cream stands, condos and beach toys that today dominate the summer season of such places.  This residency allowed me to reconnect with this world.

The pen that appears for scale in some of the pictures is exactly 5 1/2 inches long (13.95 cm)

These Bayberries, (Myrica pennsylvanica)  grow naturally in the places closest to my soul…you can view more by checking out the whole Picasa album here :

https://plus.google.com/photos/111159754279114651407/albums/5745365590466498529

This is only a first, quick post of the entire three week expedition whose primary focus was to look at the working waterfronts of the New England coast as they exist today.

Shore Search North…looking for the working waterfront #94

Shore Search North…looking for the working waterfront  #94

There will be a  L  O  N  G  interval before my next post on this site.  Much of the month of May I’ll be working in the field…looking for the working waterfront.  It may be well into June before other demands are enough satisfied that I can return here and spend enough time to report.  I’ll be looking at Point Judith, New Bedford, Provincetown, Gloucester, Portland and Rockland to see what they’re like these days.

Here’s a picture from the archive.  The Greenpoint section of Jersey city ca. 1961, when New York City, across the river was still one of the world great ports.

The original 6cm negative is one of the very few that survived a time when I destroyed my earliest work.  I wonder what else was lost…

‘Nuff...not time to worry about it now.       Next post…who knows what or when.

We’re Not Finished With This Yet ! #93

We’re Not Finished With This Yet !   #93

Facebook followers will already know that I’ve been involved with   www.fingerlakesreuse.org  a group that re-purposes everything from surplus bathroom tiles, flower pots, doors, computers and printers to cameras.  Last week I did bench and field checkout on this sweetie from 1969.

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The Pentax K1000  sort of defined the all manual, internally metered, interchangeable lens 35 mm film SLR camera. It had everything it needed…and nothing it didn’t…that sort of defines a classic.   It wasn’t the very best of the breed…you could spend a lot more money and get better machines from Canon, Nikon and arguably from Alpa, Minolta and Leitz or Zeiss.   But the K1k was a whole lot of camera for the money and many professionals got their start with this classic.   (They usually upgraded…the K1k was not built robustly enough for working press.  Staff photogs who used them usually had three or four to insure two that were working while others were in the shop.)

Sometime next week  Finger Lakes Re-Use will have this particular camera for sale to some student, advanced amateur or artist who wants to pursue film photography.  It’s not perfect, but it’s a very good deal.  It’s sort of like  the radio contest premiums… “fourth caller gets it.”   Call too soon and it’s not there yet, call too late and someone else will have  it.

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The Question everyone asks, of course, is…these days, why would anyone want to do film photography?   Digital cameras are ubiquitous, cheap, and have many, many genuine advantages, particularly for those working in color for web publication.   To answer this I can ask another question.   ? If you have a digital camera why would you want to buy a box of pastels and a pad of paper…or brushes and paint?

Just as we are not finished with poetry, painting or sculpture I strongly maintain that we are not finished with some fundamental concepts from the history of photography in the film era.  Also, I would add the connection to Fingerlakes Re-Use in the old New England aphorism “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

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This 1938 Zeiss Nettar was my first ‘real camera,’ bought with the proceeds of six weeks shelving books in the public library after  school.  It still works rather well, thank you…given some real advances in technology it’s limited today, but I’ll keep using it because it is absolutely basic  in concept and because I understand it.  With understanding comes love.

Apologies if you’ve read this rant before.

The first of the historical key concepts was the pictorialism of the early twentieth century, when photographers were still not fully believing that what they were doing was actually art.  They took their subject arenas and graphic styles from painting and traditional printing techniques and produced work that was scorned for decades but later came to be appreciated for sheer beauty regardless of the techniques used to make the pictures nor their place in the parade of stylistic fashion.  Thatch country landscapes  of the UK or the portraits of Julia Margaret Cameron are still subjects where we can find real beauty as well as historic significance.  We’re Not Finished With This Yet !   Those pictures can be done digitally, and there’s a huge number of code jockies writing plug-ins to make them look a century old…but somehow they just don’t look right in the digital realm…possibly because they originate in analog minds.

The next historical key concept is the quest for the decisive moment…the one frame where the visual statement is most eloquently made.   Henri Cartier-Bresson was not the only master in this genre.   If you’ve not been here:

http://prantikmazumder.com/      you’re in for a treat.   This genre is not easy to do with many digital cameras who’s designers stray further and further for the sound design  paradigm  Keep It Simple Stupid. 

Nikon S-2 w-Komura 80mm f-1.8

Too many digicams have far too many bells and whistles, too many menus, and are far too slow to boot-up, focus and  react in time for good hunting of the decisive moment. Too many have terrible ergonomics; they are just too small for full sized human fingers.  Too much of digital photography is centered inward to graphics of the mind rather than exploration of the the world ‘out there.’   Looking for the perfect moment is a way to distill a view of ‘reality’ rather than flooding the viewer with whole albums…terabytes… of un-edited images or fabricating pictures ( which may be beautiful and worthwhile)  in post production software.    This is partly a consequence of the illusion !  that once you’ve bought the camera and computer the cheapness of memory makes the pictures basically free.   The cheapness of digital imaging goes into a whole different perspective when you factor that the film cameras were built for half to whole century useful life where the digicams are built “uneconomic to repair,”  subject to compulsory obsolescence, dependent on platforms which depreciate in three years and become untenable after about  seven years. A veritable flood of resources goes to produce this stuff under sometimes inhuman labor conditions.  Much  bling, short attention spans.   Try to read a picture made with an Apple Quick-Take 100.  An then there is storage “in the cloud, “   wherever that is…until it rains.

There are real problems with maintaining film photography today.  Getting film  from half a dozen web stores is no problem, but processing can be.  You may have to cooperate with others for a wet darkroom.  Supply chains have, for sure, contracted. But, We’re Not Finished With This Yet !

To me, the most powerful arguments for remaining with film for B&W comes out of the relative simplicity of film cameras and their inherent immersion in the relationship between the ‘world out there’ and the image ray-traced onto the receptor  (film !) which was subject to  physical and chemical LAWS   (   Gravity…not just a good idea…It’s the LAW  ) that could be well understood by motivated middle school kids.   Very few geeks can say that about  software that can be bent to where no relationship to ‘reality”  can still be stated in common language. There are now tenured professors maintaining that “It’s ALL fiction,”  and see nothing wrong with that.

The last historic key concept on which I’ll rest my case for now  (there are others) is the concept/school of Equivalents made both popular and into very high art by Minor White  ( of zone system fame)  and a generation of students before and after White articulated the concept that a beautifully crafted photo of some object, scene, manifestation in common ‘reality’ space could be related to some other idea, object, concept, metaphor or image either in the mind or also sharable in the ‘real world.”   In the first sense this could be a picture after the model of Hamlet gesturing to the cloud that looked rather like a camel….one visual manifestation reminding someone of another visual.   The notion can be extending into the realm of the Rorschach inkblot test where a randomly produced visual was made to elicit a verbal response telling on the state of mind of the viewer…or not  (“I’m just tellin’ you, Doc…you’re the one drawing the dirty pictures…)    Minor White and his large format,  tripod toting colleagues used pictures of rocks or branches or stumps to elicit emotional responses and mental relationships to fairly complex metaphors that had some similarity to zen koans…sometimes impenetrable or triggering epiphanies when the equivalent was finally seen, perceived and appreciated.   Quite a few I’ve never decoded,  but this mode of picture making has largely been pushed offstage by lighter fair, produced by the terabyte in the digital realm.  BUT We’re Not Finished With This Yet !

Here are a couple frames from the Pentax K1k…some are more evocative than others.

©I-742-52MinorEquivalantOneWEB©

©I-742-54MinorEquivalantTwo©WEB

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

©I-742-58MinorEquivalantFourWEB

 

Frame four unfortunately is poorly focused.  Frame two looks to me like a micrograph of some grotesque intestinal deformity.   Just sayin.’

 

Why film?  In this day and age?  Black and White?   lots of people like it.  Color can be just a distraction sometimes.    Well, there are just aspects of this analog art:   We’re Not Finished With This Yet !

 

 

 

Way ’nuff for today…I skipped lunch.                                                            Next post :   Who knows ?   I’m hoping to get the 100th numbered post up on the blog before I go on the road for most of the month of May…but real life intervenes.

If you’ve read this far please leave a comment !   I’m curious about who other than Albanian spambots are stopping by…Don’t be anonymous…just say “Kilroy was Here,” or let me know who’s visited.

why…Why…WHY ? #92

why…Why…WHY ?   #92

We’ve been over this before.  For some only dimly understood reason this picture keeps happening.  It first happened in fall of 1958 in Montclair, NJ with my first ‘real’ camera.  It has reached out and grabbed me on the average once a decade ever since.  There are versions form Phillipsburg NJ, Owego NY, Rochester, Chicago and now this one from Binghamton. This one made me divert from a quest on Binghamton’s underwhealming ‘antique row,’  find a parking space, and spend four frames of 6cm film.

why…Why…WHY   is this picture so important. ?

WYS Isn’t WYG #91

WYS  Isn’t WYG  #91

Not only is what I see not what I get, but often what I say…both in the graphic sense,  and all too often in ‘real life’ …is not what I mean.    Let’s cut right to the chase.

©0665RailMobileGrainLoadingTowerROTWEB©-

This behemoth (check the size of the man door and the railroad wheels)  is  a tower on the Buffalo, NY waterfront, used to empty or fill Great Lakes freighters and/or banks of mammoth grain storage elevator silos.  It was taken from a tour boat on a trip by the Cornell chapter of the Nat. RR Historical Soc.  in July 2009.   ( TNX Gene. )  Two technical problems mar the picture.   I was using a zoom lens with a 85 to 300 mm equivalent angle of view.  Even 85mm was too tight to give the tower breathing room in the frame.  The subject is intensely vertical and I had to  finely rotate the already too tightly cropped frame to compensate for my lifelong tendency to have my camera list, like an unbalanced barge,  1.2 to 2.4 degrees to starboard.  No matter how carefully I try to get the verticals to point to the center of mother earth they are always a little cocked….have been since high school.

©0665RollingGrainLoadingTowerWEB©

After cropping the tilted margins I had to reconstruct some of the rail road rails  in Photoshop in order not to totally lose the sense that this thing sits on the ground.  (this is “art” not journalism…which opens another ball of wax.)   It is twelve stories tall, clad in steel.  It takes twenty axles of RR wheels on four bedded rails to prevent it sinking into the ground like a stone in a pond.   ?Anyone wanna guess how much this sucker weighs?  It looks pretty dilapidated.

When we were there,  the grain elevators of Buffalo were undergoing renovation so that they could be recommissioned after a decade of neglect to hold the corn harvest of industrial agriculture from the entire Great Lakes basin for ethanol motor fuel supplement.  We could argue the pros and cons of this as part of the ball of wax, but before that I wanted a printout of this cool  image.  The tower reminds me of a W. B Griffith  early silent film of the siege of Babylon, with armies of cinema extra’s straining to manhandle assault towers against the walls of the city.  I’ll only hint at the mass of the ball of wax:   So much is made in the political and environmental arenas these days of the need for small businesses to revive our economic  ( glories ? excesses?  prosperity?   hegemony?  heritage? ) …what is the right  word here?   ? Can we live without domestic heavy industry ?  Shall all the steel be puddled in the Ruhr valley or toxic backyard smelters in Bangladesh so that that we, Americans, can just push buttons on our laptops and direct all the benefits to ourselves ?  Shall all the worn out ships be broken on the beaches of Mumbai by labor in subhuman conditions ?   For sure…a ball of wax.

In order to get the graphic statement as a printer file I tinkered with it…overlong…but no matter what I tried in Photoshop under Win Sys7 the image didn’t survive transfer to WinXP for printing under drivers with fewer bugs.   When I got the color balance of the tower in the right ballpark the color of the brickwork became totally wrong, and it all printed flat. When I corrected for color and contrast of the brick the rust of the tower  became garish…a striking effect, but what I was trying to say was about massiveness and verticality,  not color orange  and blue shadows.  I don’t want to convert this one to black and white.  I just want what the print says! to convey what I mean!

This carries over into real life.  Twice in the last couple of weeks I’ve said things to friends…important things to real friends…only to realize, after they are said, that what may have been conveyed was not  what I meant to say at all !     Some would say this is social dyslexia, but we can’t use that term without violating a copy or trademark.  (really!)   So what do we call it ?

’nuff or now                                                                                      next post ?    notice, that once again, I’m exploring around the waterfront.

Extra, Extra ! Read All About It …quickie book review #90

Extra, Extra !   Read All About It …quickie book review  #90

Those of you with a good local public library or deep pockets and interested in photography should get hold of

ISBN  987-1-905711-76-5

eyewitness: Hungarian Photography in the Twentieth Century.

Baki, Ford and Szites eds.

Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK

Before I lived in a place where there were a goodly sampling of Indonesians I lived for years with… based on a sample size of only three,  the opinion that the worlds most beautiful women were Hungarian.  At least four Hungarian men can  be canonized as among the worlds greatest photograpahers.  Several others,  including the father of one in my sample, have been included in this anthology that included many familiar classic pictures and some wonderful surprises I’d not previously seen.

A touchstone quote comes early in the book.  “It is not enough to be talented…you must also be Hungarian !”  ( Andre Kertesz )   Or maybe Bengali, or Syrian…  Slowly paging thru this volume  (Hardcopy ! BOOK !) convinces me that these people really had something in their outlook on the visual world.   With the exception of a few Hapsburgs, Hungary was not a wealthy nation.  Too many armies had stripped it bare over centuries,  As a result Hungarian photographers where always behind the curve technically, shooting on glass plates with shutterless lenses when the rest of the world was working on film packs in dual shutter press cameras with front end tilts and shifts.  When the Japanese innovators gave us metered, instant return SLR’s there were Hungarians still using preset lenses in front of one shot mirrors.  Thing was…they understood pictures.

Stunning singles from this collection:  Robert Capa shooting 16mm film, “Paris de Nuit,”  Cafe du Dome, Greta Garbo with umbrella, Street Furnace in Inota, Family-Budapest-1972  (WOW!, )  Straight Road, industrials by Gabor Kerekes. “Ravens.”    I could go on and on.

What about the Hungarian style makes it so resonant ?    They all seem to have a good sense of light and texture.  They seek what is important in the world rather than just on the page or LCD screen.  They like alternate viewpoints, particularly altitude.  Sometime they look at the very ordinary with well honed perceptions.  They often worked under extraordinarily primitive technical conditions, made the most of what they had, and often put the pampered paparazzi of the digital realm to shame by making picture with CONTENT.

If you like pictures and would like to advance your learning of photography ( Writing with Light ) this is a great book for learning to Read !  pictures.

Local friends.   I’ll have it back in the Tompkins County Pub. Lib. in about two weeks…it’s worth waiting for.

If You’re Happy And You Know It, Clap Your Hands #89

If You’re Happy And You Know It, Clap Your Hands 

If You’re Happy And You Know It, Clap Your Hands 

If You’re Happy And You Know It, And You Really Want to Show It.

If You’re Happy And You Know It, Clap Your Hands

This song was a big hit in son David’s preschool (Thank you Judy Hilchey).  By the time kids are in kindergaarten most of them wouldn’t be caught admitting that they ever heard it,  but this morning my 71 year chassis, feeling like  an original VW Beetle that  had just been run at speed over the Rocky Road to Dublin,  woke up wanting to wade into a fossilized gathering of the Folk Song Society and belt out a few choruses.

I don’t usually talk about close personal stuff on this blog, but there is a point about photography to be made and I just need to crow a bit before buckling down to the workday.

later after finishing some tax paperwork:

For several weeks I’ve been feeling chronically lousy.  I’ve been in a financial bind.  (“Don’t make book if you cannot cover bets…” -Tom Laher)   My bod has been feeling my age…hardcore.   I was feeling like a social cripple (nothing new) and since late last year have been perennially lovesick with no plausible prospects of fullfillment.  In general this has meant putting one foot in front of the other and plodding toward better times.  Well, they’ve arrived.  Yesterday was a glorious harbinger of true spring…and in spring an old  ma’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of …. Fishing.

©7713Spin&RetrieveMODWEB©

I wasn’t necessary interested in panfish…(note to self…go to town hall and renew license)… but I was having computer anxiety and needed to get out in the sunshine, so I grabbed  the camera A-team go-bag and went on a little Shore Search Lakeside.  I wanted to catch the end of the days glorious light before the sun dropped behind West Hill, so I started a long quick march with full field gear from the closest road head I knew about toward the mouth of Cayuga Inlet.

©7708CayugaAncientHydraulicArtifactMODWEB©

I came to a spot where I had a choice between bushwacking thru a  large wooded area with raspberry canes up to my hips or crossing the beach with a patch of mud. There were some footprints in the mud and I was racing the setting sun, so I opted for the beach passage.  It all went fine, for about ten feet before is started to sink in.  The next thing I knew my right foot went SCHLOOUP into the mud up almost to my knee.  I could get my foot out, but only at the price of leaving my shoe behind.  I tried to secure my camera gear so I could pull out the shoe and had to put down the other foot.  You guessed it .  SCHLOOUP.

Now I had both feet and shoes stuck and for a couple of minutes of quiet contemplation thought I might be there until someone came along to help me escape.  My prospects were looking really dim as it was nearly sundown, and tomorrow was not the weekend. There were the two guys out spincasting from a canoe, but they couldn’t get close enough to be any help.

Finally I perceived my escape.  By putting my 71 year old bod thru contortions I wouldn’t have believed it could still accomplish, I managed to suck both shoes out their deep holes at the slight cost of getting my feet in just a little deeper.  By now I’m pretty muddy and I can’t stand steady. It’s a hell of a long hike back to the car for a guy with bare feet, but I looked straight up and found I was under the spreading branches of some tree.  (I should have asked its name and thanked it.)  With only three more SCHLOOUPs I could grab a low branch and pull myself to firm ground. I even had maybe twenty minutes daylight to further my photo objectives.

It felt rather nice to be have this little misadventure, but sometimes photography is a young folks art.

 

©7694PortIthacaLightMODWEB©

I got off a few frames while the suns disk dropped under the hill.   I found a much quicker, easier wasyto hike back to my wagon, and it wasn’t until I was closed up inside it that I realized what that ancient hydraulic artifact was…

©7709IthacaPortJettyMODWEB

It’s a century old, decades disused SEWER PIPE.   Wow…did I ever stink RIPE !

From there I was bound to a concert and decided to go as I was since it would be a long round trip home to change clothes.  There I met a dear friend and her husband and two musical gal buddies, who made my day  declaring ( in obvious default of the fact ) “You don’t smell bad to US !”

That’s when I started to feel un-accustomed happiness.   I realized that for weeks real friends had been aware of my distress and were supporting me by being there and being nice.   I realized that I still have sufficient soundness and health that I can still revel in the beauty of light in the world.  My family, near and far, is making it’s own progressions.  I still have music in my life and spirit. I’m privileged to be able to chose my own work.  I have to carefully watch money, but I have some to watch. I really haven’t much to be miserable about, so I might as well be happy and thankful for it.

 

”nuff for now                        next post :    who knows ??  but I do seem to keep returning to searching along the shore.

 

 

 

 

 

Victory, A Quickie #88

Victory, A Quickie  #88

Here’s an image whose evolution illustrates a lot of why I feel so ambiguous these days about working in the digital realm.  The picture file was captured outside the 1941 Historical Aircraft Group warbird  museum in Geneseo, NY.  I considered it a throwaway at the time because the scene was cluttered, the museum not open, and I was there for another event with direct market potential. I only shot 4 frames and went off to take care of business. I didn’t see the meaning and potential of the image until I saw it on screen and realized  I could remove a trashed, truly ugly mattress and other gross debris with photoshop.  After close to an hour of mousing with the rubber stamp tool the mattress, bottles and barf bags were gone and the basic metaphor of the image became visible.  Negative space where the warcat wings once were and the bucket loader holding the flight of spirit to the ground.  I’m actually not sure WX this carcass is a Wildcat (F4F) or a Hellcat (F6F).  Any naval aviators got an informed opinion ?

©0567EarthboundWildcatT2WEB©

My first try to print the image failed because I’d used the PS burn tool to darken the sky.  It looked fine on screen, but when I pulled an artist proof the burn looked crappy and obvious.  Worse, I was deep in the printer driver issues of Win Sys7 and couldn’t get even close to W.Y.S.I.W.Y.G.  (what you see ISN’T what you get.)   I still haven’t licked that problem.   I tinkered with the graphics of the idea quite a bit and made a printer of this version, three up, of basic, lightened and desaturated versions.

©0567EarthboundWildcat3UpWEB©

I like the desaturated version a lot, and may explore it further, but decided to first pursue the basic version.  You can still see the obvious burns in the upper right sky.  That bugged me so I trashed the working copy and started over with the original source image.  Once again I had to mouse out the mattress and barf bags.  I moved the printer back to an older, slower machine running WinXP and some of the driver issues went away.   Rather than ruin another version with the burn tool I tried to get the heavy dark feeling with the curve tools and tweaking brightness and contrast. The Try2 version is at the top of the page and is more or less what I was driving at.  I went to print a hardcopy and was amazed at the punch the image delivered with WAY increased saturation.  How that happened I’m clueless.  What you see is not what you get.  It was in the exact opposite direction from where I thought I wanted to go, but the print works.

The picture would have been close to impossible in wet color chemistry post production.  The advantages of the digital manipulations are obvious in this case, but digital driver issues and artifacts have driven me near crazy for three week.  I refused to give up in the image once I understood it.  The airplane must have survived many Pacific theater victories to have ended here.  I’ve survived the aggravation of printing the metaphor.  It’s a victory.

Factor Markets #87

Factor Markets #87

Before I get to the meat of this post I wanna crow just a bit.  I’ve been awarded an artists residency on Cape Cod in May.  I’ll be working on the Shore Search theme…both north and south.  Periods on Cape Cod have been important in my evolution and living in a primative dune shack on the Cape Cod National Seashore will be an opportunity to process unfinished business.

In the very early 1960′s I was working as a minimum wage gopher in a Wall St. brokerage house.  I hated every minute of it.  A buddy send me a postcard from the cape,  said I should join him…  I borrowed a camera from a high school sweetie’s brother    (…yes,  Rayna, yours…) and hit the road.

©Minus115-05Home On The Bay©

Home, home on the bay, where the youth and the Rollieflex play,

Where never was heard a political word, and the dunes were not foggy all day.

For several weeks we slept, with permission,  in this dilapidated former oyster packing shed.  On clear nights we slept under starlight and when the weather was downwardly mobile we moved under the part where the roof was still more or less complete. We had to time our comings and goings, because at full high tide the water was armpit deep at the door.  The church tower rang the bell of the ships watch.

©Minus115-08DerelictHull©

I had only four rolls of film and at that point only the vaguest concept of adequate exposure.  It’s astonishing what dumb stuff I then though was worth a picture, but one roll remains as a window into a way of life what was already then rapidly disappearing. I recently came across a scanner capable of digitizing 6cm film at a price realistic to my social security budget.  These raw scans (not yet photoshopped)  take me back half a century.  Even then it had been decades since the last horse put its muzzle in the village stock trough, but the pump still worked and the water was delicious.  On my last visit it was still there, but  “The Pump Don’t Work ‘Cuz The Vandals Took The Handles”

©Minus112-13StockTroughPump©

OK, back to business.  Factor markets, if my understanding of the use of the term in economics is correct , refers to the forces and conditions under which a business obtains non-capital tools and consumable materials from suppliers.  These figure in what the Internal Revenue Service calls “cost of goods sold.”  Every business has its factor markets.

Those of us who try to sell something called “art,” can’t escape this, so we might as well think about it.  A poet can get by with very, very little in the direct creation of their art. They might want to blow $800 on a cool laptop with lots of RAM , but can really get by with just a really good meat memory or a notebook and a few pens or pencils.

In  early times painters could do amazing work with finely ground dirt, pulverized metal oxides,  or stuff extracted from biologicals.  They could make their own brushes.  I’ve done it…it’s harder than you’d think.  But these days painters have an amazing factor market supply chain with dozens of whole families of paints, brushes, substrates and toys to tempt them in the stores or on-line.

Those of us in photography left the do-it-yourself realm a century and a half ago.  With the exception of an “alternative processes” school  movement toward maximum simplicity  in photographic imaging no one seriously expects to hand fabricate their own equipment and supplies. Students  do pinhole lens-less cameras.  A few people beautifully hand coat photo paper for wet photochemistry, and some of us have put together modules of parts for custom equipment adapters, but it took two professional mathematicians a year and a half in the pre-computer era to optimize the design equations for the classic Zeiss Tessar lens…only four elements…today, gigabyte computing gives us lenses of more than ten elements. They are not always better.  Even before the digital revolution photographers were utterly dependent on their factor markets.  If you evolved a style of printing based on the glorious Kodak Medalist paper you were a  captive of their distributors.  When The E.K Corp. decided there wasn’t enough money in the fine art Medalist paper market and discontinued it… you were screwed.  When the marketing muscle of Kodak pushed Plus X pan film into all the 35mm outlets  Ansco Versapan film, a technically quite superior product, became rapidly extinct.  The same fate awaited DuPont Varilour paper, the second generation of variable contrast enlarging stock and at the time, the finest available.  Things change…that’s natural, and the economic Darwinists will still insist that it’s for the best;  (despite all evidence to the contrary.)

But sometimes there’s a break between progressive quantitative  change and discontinuous qualitative shift.  The digital revolution…for whatever positive aspects it has…it has brought huge democratization to the medium and some wonderful digital image artists are native… but its  DYI era ended when The Woz and Jobs moved out of the garage.   Now, no matter how you try to escape your factor markets will be controlled by forces over which you have no insight or control.  Some few will be able to surf the waves of the future by second guessing the factors… but no one in the digital realm is going to be making it from scratch.

Some factors in factor markets become extremely powerful.  From the completion of the transcontinental railroad until the construction of the interstate hi-way system the monopoly railroads were such a power that shipping costs were inescapable in every factor market.  The power of the railroads caused them to be increasingly hated by their own customers and vectored transport toward trucking.   When the power of large forces in the  digital realm reaches the point where the customer starts hating the supplier there is a huge vector for change.  Does anyone really LIKE Microsoft?  Is Apple really benign?  I know already that Adobe is not my friend and I’m outright livid with Hewlett-Packard, even disregarding the political posture of HP’s current CEO. This doesn’t even consider the un-sustainable nature of the consumer technology world where capital equipment investments  become crap in less time than they amortize.  Many of us have friends who bet the farm on KayPro computing. Eventually, I think, these companies will have futures similar to the ‘fallen flag’ railroads of the past.

In my own development as a photographic artist the tyranny of the ‘big kids on the block’ is already a vector urging me toward other lines of expression.   I can write more.   I can do color exploration and 2D design experiments  as easily with way less technology than most of what’s in tune with contemporary digital photo art.   And as long as the factor markets are still able to supply traditional photo materials from sources other than the Great Yellow Father in Rochester I can still operate with a technology that I can more fully understand and exploit.   This isn’t nostalgia.  It isn’t an attempt to turn the clock back to the horse trough era any more than retaining skill with pigment paint and brush was Luddite when Kodak said “you push the button and we do the rest.”

I’m bothered by aspects of the digital realm and this residency award  will induce me to find out were my basics are.  I’ll still have to deal with my factor markets, but for a little while I’ll again take the weather as it comes.

©Minus114-13SugarSandHiWayWEB04©

Once again I’ll walk the Cape Cod foreshore roads with bare feet….remembering…processing.

’nuff for now