French Pond Rd. Again

Two photos for your pleasure. I've featured this house before, a detail of the front porch, back on May 24th. I liked this view of it as I was driving down the road this afternoon. There is a barn across the road that is falling/being torn down and I made the second photo of that.

Both were made using my Canon 7D with the 18-135mm lens. Conversion to B&W was done in Nik SE Pro 2 (top image) and in Lightroom 4 (bottom image). To share the photos with others, as always refer them to this page. Copying and re-posting elsewhere without permission is prohibited not to mention bad manners.

New Work, Old Subject

I took a day to go to the mountains yesterday. My day did not go as planned but I've learned over the years not to plan too firmly and to roll with whatever happens. Besides, any day in the mountains is a good day for me. From our new house I usually would take a different route than I used to (shorter from here) but I was going to town anyway and from there it was about the same either way so I decided to revisit old haunts. Above is Mountain Pond on Rt. 30, a place I used to stop almost every time I went to the Adirondacks. The light was very nice on this group of shoreline rocks so here it is.

The woods are very dry. The DEC has issued a "high fire danger" warning. I noted that water levels on several ponds/lakes were down as much as a foot. Quite a change from my lean-to adoption trip when the water levels were a little high.

I decided to revisit Cascade Mt. Falls. A friend and I went there last year to make a series of photos one of which I posted on the blog and others that I put on Flickr. After that visit torrential rains from hurricane Irene flooded a lot of areas in the Adirondacks and caused landslides along some mountainside brooks including the one by Cascade Lakes. I wanted to see how the falls had changed. Answer: Dramatically!

There was a large slide on the mountainside above the falls where the brook used to run among trees. All the debris coming down the mountainside stripped the trees and vegetation that had bordered the falls leaving this wide bare swath of rock.

The damage was even more dramatic below. There used to be a shallow pool a the base of the falls which was made by an old dam that once captured the water for a hotel that was on the bit of land between Cascade Lakes. The slide took out the remains of the dam and carved a deep ravine where a shallow brook once ran through the woods below the falls. The amount and size of rocks that the slide moved is mind boggling. It will be a long time before this spot is as "scenic" as it once was.

Both photos were made with a Canon 7D and an 18-135mm lens. The falls are a three (horizontal) frame stitch. I discovered I didn't have my wide angle lens when I set up to make that photo so I had to improvise..

New B&W eBook From Guy Tal

Guy Tal has come out with a new ebook on digital B&W. I was privileged to get a chance to review it before the release (today) and was impressed by its thoroughness. I have a lot of respect for Guy's vision and skill and in this 59 page ebook he lets us in on his working methods for B&W.

I should start by saying this is a book for those who are serious about B&W and their art. If you are looking for a guide with 10 quick and easy tips for better B&W, this book is not for you. If you are into using Lightroom and Photoshop to do conversions and want to step it up to the next level by studying how one of the best does it, you want this book. Although it is brief it isn't light reading and I'm sure you will learn something that benefits your work even if you are already an advanced digital photographer. The insight into his thought process and methods alone are worth studying. I recommend it highly.

The ebook can be purchased at http://guytalbooks.com/catalog_show_ebook.php?bid=4


or you can use the link in the left hand column to reach his ebook page.
The photo above is a page from the beginning of the book.

Pulling Weeds

Yesterday, while looking at a friend's flower garden, I found myself pulling her weeds. As a long time gardener it is a habit but as I think about it it is more than that. Many years ago I learned that when confronted with and feeling overwhelmed by problems and situations I found the best remedy is to pick one or more small things that you can actually do something about and focus on getting that done. The key of course is to recognize the things you can actually effect from those you can't. The benefit is that by focusing on what you can do, you both channel your attention away from the things you can't change and you shorten the list of things that are stressing you out.

Pulling weeds is that kind of activity. What needs to be done is simple and direct, identify the plants that don't belong and remove them. When you get done there is the reinforcement of seeing a weed free garden. Any simple chore will do the same if you approach it with focus. So can creative activities like photography. By really looking at the world around you, thinking about it in photographic terms, you step away from stresses and gain power, the power of creating something of beauty and value that you can share with others.

The photo was taken with my smart phone with processing in PostWorkShop3 and Photoshop CS5.

Yes, My Grapes Are Sour

A while back I entered Outdoor Photographer's 3rd Annual Great Outdoors  Photo Contest. I have received an email announcing the winners. I wasn't a winner or even an honorable mention. No surprise there. They had thousands of entries and they were good photos. So what's the sour grapes about? All the winners and honorable mentions were western landscapes. All of them. Every one. A look at the finalists reveals that all but (maybe) 7 are western landscapes. Even the maybe 7, one shot of tulips, several seashores and a couple of others, aren't clearly not western. Come on people. There are great landscapes all over this country. One reason I rarely buy or read OP anymore is that they seem stuck on a particular idea of outdoors and it usually involves the western US. Open request to OP: If you are going to publish outdoor images, could you show a little less bias toward one region?

The photo above was made in Northern NY about 20 miles from the Canadian border (as the crow flies). It was made with a Canon 10D and a 28-135mm lens on an overcast May evening after a rain.

Back to the River

I drove down to Clayton today to see the tall ship Fair Jeanne. There was also a tug boat at the dock and that became the subject of today's photo. It was a grungy working ship but there were some visually interesting details. The Fair Jeanne was a nice ship but more modern than the Lynx which I toured and later cruised on last year. I confess to being partial to the old wooden tall ships. It's purely a matter of aesthetics. Steel hulls and decking look out of place with tall ship rigging, at least to me they do.

The ships were there for a festival weekend that had way too many people for my taste and loud boat races that made wakes that rocked the 100 foot plus tall ship. The promos said there were food and wine booths but the only food booth I saw was pet treats. I did buy a bottle of North Country Red from the Thousand Island Winery booth.

I did find some images on the Fair Jeanne. The one I like best from there is also a detail, a photo of a brass cleat and some rope on the afterdeck.

 Both photos made with a Canon 7D and an 18-135mm lens.

This waterfall is on a side loop off the trail I take to do my leanto cleanup trips and I usually take that loop on the way out just because it's a neat place. I swam here once many years ago but the water was frigid. I didn't stay in the water very long. Just upstream behind the trees on the right is Rocky Falls leanto. The water was too high to get to it without wading on Thursday and I wasn't in a wading mood.

Since moving I go to the High Peaks by a different route and consequently am seeing different things along the way. On my way home I spotted a sign along the road that said "Historic Church" with an arrow pointing down a side road. I turned around and drove a short distance down the side road where I found this. As I was shooting the photo a woman came out from the building in back and asked if I would like to see inside. Of course I did. One of my personal projects is photos of unusual Adirondack churches. The woman was (is) Anabel Proffitt, the summer pastor and a professor at a seminary in Pennsylvania. She lives in the cabin behind the church during the summer. If you happen to be in the Childwold area go and check out this church. Rev. Proffitt will be happy to give you the tour.

Waterfall photo was made with a Canon G12 and the church photo with a Canon 7D. Both converted to B&W using Nik Silver Efex Pro 2.

I began my 19th/20th/?? season as a leanto adopter in the High Peaks of the Adirondacks yesterday. I've lost track of how many years I've been doing it. I was shooting for 20 years but I'm not sure I'm there yet. I had a pleasant hike in to Scott Clearing. The brooks were running a little high and the crossing by the leanto was a bit tricky. I made it without falling in like I did last year though and finished my work there without incident.

On my way out I hadn't gone too far when I met two young men (late teens/early twenties) who asked where I was coming form. I told them and then they asked if I knew where the turn off for Street & Nye (two of the High Peaks) was. I replied that I did and that it was "back that way" indicating the direction they had come from. "Where?" one of them asked. "Just after you passed Heart Lake". The one who had asked then said "That must be two miles". "At least" I said, "probably closer to 3." They then wanted to know where this trail went. I told them either Wallface Mt. or Indian Pass. They looked at one another blankly, I said something to the effect of have a good day and left them there. I wondered after if I should have offered more advice. It was clear from their sagging, half empty day packs that they were ill equipped to spend a night in the woods and there was no way they could reach their objectives in the time remaining. It was almost noon and they didn't even know how to find the mountains they intended to climb but I've resolved not to give unsolicited advice so I said no more.

When I got back to Saranac Lake I got a sub and took it to the lake in the middle of town where I made the above photo. I was attracted to the reflection and really wanted to photograph just that but my lens wasn't long enough. I shot this photo and went to change the lens. Before I finished a couple of guys decided to race back and forth in a motor boat and ruined the reflections. Looking off from the park in another direction I found the photo below in which I removed all color except the red in the chairs, their reflections and the two floats. Red was the only color that mattered. The others were just a distraction.

Both made with a Canon 7D, the first with an 18-135mm and the second with an old Tamron 70-300mm. I wonder if I should have offered advice to those guys. I wonder if they got out of the woods before dark.

Adirondack Marsh

Another photo from my last ramble in the Adirondacks, a marsh along Rt. 56 between Colton and Sevey's Corners. I learned several years ago the difference between a marsh, a bog and a swamp. This is a marsh because it has open areas of water as well as hummocks of marsh grass. A bog has spongy vegetation, grasses, mosses, pitcher plants and other plants that like 'wet feet' but not open water. A Swamp has trees in a wet area. You can find all three in the Adirondacks but swamps are most likely the result of beaver dams in my experience. I like bogs for macro photographs of plants but marshes and swamps offer interesting reflections on the open water.

Canon 7D, ISO 400, 160th @ f/11 handheld.

I'm Still Here

It has been almost a month since I last posted anything. I've been busy painting and moving. We have more to do but the pace is slowing so I hope to get back to more frequent photography and posting. This photo was made along French Pond Rd. I took a day to go to the mountains last week and used the French Pond Rd. to bypass a construction site on Rt. 56. I spotted this house on my way down to the ADKs but the light was wrong. Coming back it was better so I stopped and made several photos. I thought it needed to be a B&W. After some initial processing in Lightroom 4 the conversion was done in NIK Silver Efex Pro 2. Canon 7D, ISO 200, 1/60th @ f/11.

Busy

I've been goofing off on posting. We bought a new house and I've been busy painting and getting ready to move. We did take a weekend off to visit Longwood Gardens in PA and I have posted some photos at https://picasaweb.google.com/113942839858347342814/LongwoodGardensApril232012. Posts to the blog will continue to be spotty (spottier than usual that is) until after the move. That's all for now folks. Gotta go paint woodwork.

Please do not re-post without attribution and the photos are all copyrighted.

New Toy

We're planning on visiting Longwood Gardens in a little over a week and I wanted to be sure I was prepared for what ever lighting there is. I'd seen LED ring lights on ebay and decided to buy one. Most have limited brightness settings based on turning on & off banks of the the LEDs either left or right. I wanted one with continuous stepless dimming. I bought one made by JJC in China (most of the LED lights on the market are made in China, come on USA) and it arrived today. It operates on 4 AA batteries and mounts to the front of the lens in the same way Cokin filters do with a flat adapter ring that fits a slot on the back of the ring light. It cost $38.90 with shipping. I had to supply the batteries.

I wanted continuous dimming so that it could be used as a fill light when photographing flowers in bright sun or as a primary source when the light is low. The above isn't bright sun (obviously) but our windowsill this evening. It was shot with the ring light at its brightest setting. The camera was set at ISO 400 and the exposure was 1/100th at f/11 handheld. The DOF could have been a bit deeper but it is just my first experiment and I think this light is going to be very handy.

Limited. Get it before it's gone!

Rising Mist, Lake Abenaki

I photographed this scene back in 2004 while on my way to Lake George for a 9AM meeting at ADK Headquarters. I've shown it digitally several times and it is currently on my Zenfolio site but I made an physical print, actually two prints, for the first time today. I had proposed a print swap with a fellow photographer and this is the image he chose.  I printed it 9"x18" (image area) on Epson Fine Art Watercolor paper.

There was a discussion today on Guy Tal's blog about limited editions.  I wrote a piece about that back in 1997 on The Circle of Confusion, a B&W photography website I used to have. There are a few pieces of that site still camped out somewhere in webland. You can find them by doing a Google search on my name and "sharelessons".

So what's the connection with the photo and the title? I don't do limited editions. I  number and date my fine prints on the back as well as sign them front and back. So far in eight years there are two (count them, 2) signed prints of "Rising Mist, Lake Abenaki" in existence. My friend gets print #1 in exchange for one of his photos that I admired. I don't intend to set an artificial limit on the number of times I will print & sign this photo before I die but I doubt it will be very many. This is the first time I've been asked to print it. In any case there is only one print #2. If you want, you can own it, the only #2 copy of this photo that will ever exist. The price is $150 matted to 16"x24" with 100% cotton museum board. Shipping & handling is $25. International shipping may be higher. Contact me at Jim dot Bullard at Gmail dot com.

If you are interested in the limited edition discussion and why I don't do them, you can read Guy's blog here http://guytal.com/wordpress/2012/04/the-ethics-of-limited-editions/ and my old 1997 article on the subject is reproduced below. It was written in film days but mostly still applies, if anything more so. With darkroom prints there was a finite number of times I wanted to dodge and burn the same image.

Thoughts on Limited Editions

I have mixed feelings about limited edition prints. I was trained in fine art where the "print" is the product of a printmaking process (intaglio, lithograph, woodcut, etc.) and is considered an original work or it is a reproduction of an original work (watercolor, oil painting etc.) and is considered to be a "print". Printmakers prints are often limited in part by the process. A lithograph drawing on a stone will produce only so many prints before the drawing deteriorates and won't produce a good print anymore. Other printmaking processes have some limits based on the durability of the plate, screen or whatever. A well cared for negative has no such practical limit.

Painters often multiply their markets by having photomechanical prints made from their original paintings. The prints can be sold for significantly less than the original painting and in large numbers. These reproduction prints are sometimes promoted by limiting the edition to an arbitrary number because there is a notion that a limited edition print is worth more by virtue of its "guaranteed" rarity. Original photographs, however, are not reproductions.
Some photographers market their prints in limited editions to increase their value in the market place. Ansel Adams did not produce limited editions because he believed "the negative is the score and the print is the performance." Ansel had started out to be a concert pianist, thus the musical analogy. He believed that each print was an individual performance with no two exactly alike and it would be just as absurd to limit the times it could be printed as it would be to say that a Mozart concerto could only be performed 500 times then it had to be retired and never performed again. I can sympathize with that idea. I have negatives that I would not print the same way today that I did 20 years ago.
David Vestal, writing in PHOTO TECHNIQUES magazine, tackled the issue of limited editions in his monthly column by conducting a survey of several hundred photographers he knew. He got a remarkable 2/3 return of his survey forms so I think his findings are significant. He found that those photographers who do not do limited editions produce an average of 6 prints of each of their images while edition sizes for those who print in limited editions were over 100. He concluded that rather than insuring rarity of the print, the "limited edition" actually resulted in a larger number of prints than might have otherwise been produced.
I've had some people suggest to me that I needn't actually print X number of prints to have a limited edition, I need only decide the maximum number of prints I will print (if I get enough orders) and print them as they are sold. This seems rather dishonest to me. If I decide that a given image will printed in an edition of 100, then print only 10 (reserving the other 90 until after the 10 are sold) and only 7 sell, I will never print the other 90. The first print then is not, in fact, 1 of 100. It is 1 of 10 and I will have mislabeled those 10 prints.
So far I have done only two limited editions. Both were promotional pieces which were given away, not sold. If after I am dead and gone they are valued higher than my unnumbered prints it will be a testament to the gullibility of the collectors who buy them. I do not put anywhere near the care into the printing of 50 to 75 identical prints that I do to a print for exhibition.
The art market encourages artists to produce limited editions because many buyers of art are convinced that limited editions are more valuable therefore they command higher prices. Like any other artist I am tempted by anything that will allow me to get more for my work. One does not easily make a living as a fine artist (I don't) and even though I think that it is artificial and downright silly for people to pay more for limited editions it has some appeal. Maybe I should make it into my gimmick (gimmicks sell art too) by using a "limited edition protest numbering system". Something like "#155 of 12". Before I do that I have to decide whether to number them all the same or randomly. For now I'll just produce the best prints I can and hope that I can attract buyers to whom quality work is the primary criteria.

Addendum Dec. 21, 1997

Since adding the above to my web site I have had some e-mail objections to the thoughts I expressed. My intentions in writing it were to crystallize my own thoughts and feelings on the subject which had been simmering for several years and had the heat turned up by David Vestal's column ("Rare or Well Done", Jan/Feb 1997 issue of PHOTO Techniques). I have revisited his article and reviewed the objections which can be categorized as follows:

• I shouldn't object to something that is done for the benefit of the gallery and the artist. Limited editions increase both prices and sales.
• Galleries promotion of limited editions help educate the public to art thereby expanding the market. A lot of people get into buying art through investing in limited editions.
• Most editions are actually only in the range of 25 to 50 and it's an exceptional photo that sells more than 10-15. Most artists only print a few then print the rest of the edition as needed to satisfy sales so there is usually greater rarity than the edition numbers indicate.

The survey that David Vestal did of 215 photographers (the survey was sent to 300 so that's a very significant response. Ask any statistician) showed edition sizes anywhere from 5 to 150. The majority were in the 5 to 50 range with the statistical average number being 32.71 prints. The average prints per negative for those photographers who were not printing "limited editions" was 6.9. He calculated that meant that (on average) there were 4.74 "limited edition" prints for every unlimited print out there. The above math makes a mockery of the use of the word "limited" in reference to editions and it becomes very evident that the motivation is to sell more prints. This is further borne out by the response I received which told me that 10-15 is the actual usual limit of sales even though the edition sizes normally run 30 to 50. Even 10 to 15 actual prints (are the unprinted ones 'virtual' prints?) is 2-3 times the average number of non-limited edition prints.
What bothers me is that increasing the price and volume of work sold by convincing the public they are getting greater rarity than they would get buying an unlimited print is a form of fraud. Those participating are actually doing so in order to INCREASE the number of prints they will make and sell and even covering their bets by setting an edition size 2-3 times what they actually expect to sell. Basically it's the old "tell them what they want to hear and they'll buy the product" pitch. I find it very disingenuous to characterize this as a way to 'educate' the public to appreciate art. I think the art buying public deserves better.
As for the last I still feel it isn't honest to label a print "1 of 30" when I've really only printed 5 and may or may not ever print the other 25 'virtual' prints. While there is an increase in rarity over what is stated in the edition limit, rarity in and of itself is no guarantee of future value and it remains a false statement. I don't like doing business on falsehoods and certainly not art.
After mulling all this over I have decided that in future the prints I make for sale will be ordinally numbered and dated (for the benefit of those who care how many there really are) but without reference an edition size. The ordinal numbering will be on the back of the print (also the mount label if I sell it mounted). I can live with that.

I went wandering in the mountains yesterday, a tour by car, no hiking. I wanted to find the trailhead for McKensie Mt. for a hike later this year. It turns out the trailhead isn't marked. You have to know where it is and the trail register box is part way up the trail. I did learn where to look so I'm all set when I decide to climb it.

I shot two rolls of medium format B&W and about the same number of digital photos. I thought I might send the film off to be processed but I checked several places online when I came home and found that it now costs $8-15/roll just for developing, no prints. I don't want prints and I have the tanks to develop my own but my chemicals are old so I guess I'll be buying some new chemicals. I'll have to mail order them. No one locally carries them anymore.

The photo is a common view of Whiteface from the road between Lake Placid and Wilmington. Made with my Canon 7D and a polarizer.

P.S. I highly recommend David duChemin's post to his blog today. Link below.
http://www.pixelatedimage.com/blog/2012/04/we-bounce/