Nothing under lock and key Chris...have been of late shedding most everything once thought of as belongings, no need for them really. Have come to view my role as caretaker, and temporary only, of whatever has come to me...A few markers along the way that fed my hungers were a family of suicides, a brilliant but brutal father, himself the son of a russian violin maker who understood the tonal glazes of placenta bloods, an extraordinary opportunity to study Color and Light with Sibyl Moholy-Nagy in the mid sixties at the time of the first suicide, and the cavern carved by that made vast space for all she did transmit...we were born on the same day, she in 1903...both Scorpios. She took the role for me of protector, the light and sound waves only overtaking me in these last years. There are some manuscripts left unpublished too by some which I have only been able to read in this past year. The Tibetan Book of the Dead has contributed, the amazing presence always with me of my short time with Minor White...I spent an evening at his grave last week...
The only thing I am able to say is that I wait a long time before the single frame. It is either there , or it is not...For reasons unnessary to this discussion, my eyes do not tolerate sunlight well, which is fine with me, as it is the energies of the intersections, directions and emergings of light , its communication I am grateful to receive.
I used to slip pieces of translucent papers between the source of light and the film in the holders when my only camera was a speed graphic. That is the same sense that informs shooting in any atmosheres of water...Fog, snowstorms, dripping humidity, rain, high seas sitting in the front of the pilot house on the ferry to Monhegan. I've acquired some absurd methods to keep my cameras dry, me , not so much...I love the weather and its light. It is through all those levels of atmosphere that the play with absolute performs its composition. I'm happy with that. The optical rules are different somehow in the brief margins at the edge of light and darkness. I rarely shoot anything other than ISO 100. I never use AWB. I do play with custom WB, sometimes 9 or 10 readings off a patch in my boot or from the passport checker and set the one that feels like the light to me. Maybe change up a time or two the first twilight but then no more...I have a strong sense of the experience and shoot RAW to afford myself the luxury of later play...but nothing like the complications you suppose...I am somewhat a simpleton and quite happy that way.
When I am painting, I mix my own greys from copper phthalocyanine and carbon black...that seems to feed the palette of my photography... you'd laugh at my brush pot too...as often as not I paint with the handles, or branches or kale as I do the brushes...not much good at using the tools as "I should". Even J Schewe says it's good to play!
I rarely go out with more than one prime. I have wonderful glass acquired along the way, but most is lent to others. I want that constant of one length when having those conversations and the only "trick" I can offer is to constantly with awareness attempt to override how our brain and its optical laws tries to over ride those of our true eyes and seeing. I do dream in colour and have vivid recall, and often those colours turn up behind me in the water when I least expect them...always telling myself to turn around! Sleep allows us to dissolve our sense of self and sometimes I'm lucky to hang on to that when on these hikes...I think old age is helping me there too...
Sibyl Moholy-Nagy's husband, Lazlo, said in 1925, "A few more vitally progressive years, a few more ardent followers of photographic techniques and it will be a matter of universal knowledge that photography was one of the most important factors in the dawn of a new life." Playing outside the rules I think he may still come to be right... It has certainly brought me great joy in my end game!
Lumine....