Thanks, Dave; yes, there is a temptation to do that (open shadows), but there are also times when doing so adds little but a flattening of the idea, the impression.
I seldom did early 'morning glory' photography - the only other time I can remember in any detail was once in Cannes, if only because it was the only way we could get an emptyish beach to ourselves, life there starting way too early with beach-cleaners, trucks hosing down the roads etc. et-spensive-cetera.
The Formentor shot was indeed very early, and my son was with me, no doubt bitterly but silently regretting having agreed, the day before, to get up and go with me. The camera location is just up from a car park at a pretty high and precipitous sea-cliff - which most of that northern Mallorcan coast is - and that early it's quite spooky, with lots of gulls swooping and crying in the sky around one. I wonder what they all lament; perhaps they were once human. It is easy to believe anything up there.
Eric, I started my website with nothing but scans, and without Kodachromes there wouldn't have been one, most likely. But scanning is a pain, of that there's no doubt. I often think it would have been wonderful if the transition to digital had been as simple as changing the back on a 500 Hassy, for not much more money than a film back, and simply carrying on shooting on 6x6 format, but to a sensor, instead. Perhaps that would have been the ideal way: no slow, expensive and painful trawl through umpteen small incremental steps, but a straight swap into instant forty or fifty megapixies of back. Impatience is the problem, the entrepreneurial desire to get rich immediately. The product should have been fully developed and only then announced to the world. However, had Kodak realised where it was going to lead, perhaps it would never have been born.
Rob
