Show us some Abstracts!

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Your new "upside down" vision seems a little like a throwback to the view camera ground glass.   

[BobDavid]

Your new "upside down" vision seems a little like a throwback to the view camera ground glass.   

True, but I'm only flipping them vertically. I have a nice camera obscura that I built in grad school. Whenever I get the itch to see the world upside down and flipped along the X axis, I pull it off the shelf and peer into it. Have you ever seen an upside down alligator? I'm sure Russ has.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Some of my happiest photographic moments with my old 8x10 view camera were just peering at the ground glass with no film holders with me.
I would see these lovely scenes, full size (in those days, 8x10" wasa big print), and in glorious technicolor. When I used film it was always B&W.

[BobDavid]

Some of my happiest photographic moments with my old 8x10 view camera were just peering at the ground glass with no film holders with me.
I would see these lovely scenes, full size (in those days, 8x10" wasa big print), and in glorious technicolor. When I used film it was always B&W.

As a young adult, I tried shooting color negative film with a Calumet 4X5 and a 210mm Commercial Ektar lens. I gave up after going through a 25-sheet box. The prints I got back from the lab were uninspiring. I couldn't afford to have anything custom printed. So, like most amateurs, I went back to black and white. ... I have strong and pleasant memories of covering up with a dark cloth and viewing  topsy turvy scenes projected in living color onto the ground glass screen. And of course using a 7X loupe added to the enjoyment.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Weston's Pepper, in color, and through a glass darkly?

[Peter McLennan]

Rob, you raised the standard of "abstract" to a new level with the dancers!

Totally!  Better than a Pirelli calender! 

[jani]

While your "strip dancers" were stark and naked, this is simply lovely colour.

[Rob C]

Jan,

Thank you for the comment; it's particularly pleasing to me because that search for colour, as almost apart from shape or substance, it really what attracts me about colour. Take colour too literally, and then I find that black/white offers me more. Thing about all photography that hit me after I stopped doing it commercially, was that everybody knows what something looks like, and thus, what's the point of making a straight picture of it since there's neither mystery nor question. In other words, where business needs accuarte information or even better fibs, the amateur side of the art is entirely open to the individual's personal quest of leaving reality aside, wherever that leads.

Peter,

Thanks for the compliment, and FWIW I have to agree about Pirelli insofar as they truly do seem to have lost the plot in the past few years. In fact, I would venture out on a limb and say that ever since they did the Hans Feurer one in the Seychelles, which opened a several-year gap in production, they have been hoist by their own petard of hubris, thinking, when they took up production again, that the honest route of letting a photographer do his thing was no longer enough: the pretentiousness of the art world crept (rushed?) into the things and they made that fatal mistake of embracing Concepts. Calendars are not about concepts, calendars are about people wanting something attractive and possibly useful on their wall. One usually gets to see a single page at a time; concepts require a time-continuity of visibility in order to make any sense: you have to  be allowed to flick through the whole thing at once to get it. IMO, with calendars, all they (concepts) do is stifle the model and snapper on the ground. I've been through that one several times myself, and it ends up in tears and lost relationships.

Eric,

I don't think Weston would have approved; come to think of it, I don't think many of that era would have approved! Fortunately or otherwise, I have seldom fitted my times for very long: seems I arrive either too soon or too late, and the older I get the stronger the impression I have that yep, it is all far too late in the circle for personal synchrony with the zeitgeist! For this whirl, at least!

;-)

Rob

[Telecaster]

As my Aunt Anna likely would've said, had she seen Rob's last three photos: "Those snaps are positively spiffing!"

Positively spiffing, always spoken with an affected posh accent, was among her favorite phrases. Whenever a photo of mine earned this verdict I knew I'd done very well.

-Dave-

[Rob C]

As my Aunt Anna likely would've said, had she seen Rob's last three photos: "Those snaps are positively spiffing!"

Positively spiffing, always spoken with an affected posh accent, was among her favorite phrases. Whenever a photo of mine earned this verdict I knew I'd done very well.

-Dave-

I think I love your Aunt Anna! Not so sure about them being my last photos, though; had high hopes on making more later on...

;-)

Rob

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Rob,

I would say your three most recent photos are positively spiffing, and I look forward to many more, as I expect Dave and Aunt Anna do too.

[Rob C]

Rob,

I would say your three most recent photos are positively spiffing, and I look forward to many more, as I expect Dave and Aunt Anna do too.

Eric,

Having wasted the morning in a badly-attended Community of Owners EGM, I take your post as a positive lifting of my soul! I'm so relieved that I refused to stand as pressy anymore a few years ago: the sense of community has changed so dramatically in the past thrirty-six years; most of the original people who bought wanted to be able to retire to the place or simply enjoy it themselves whenever the fancy took, whereas the newer lot see it only as a means to making rental (illegal without permits, which you can almost never get) income, and obviously want to spend as little as possible on maintaining the area. BobDavid may soon have a new subject to cover! I hope I jest.

Rob

[Peter McLennan]

everybody knows what something looks like, and thus, what's the point of making a straight picture of it since there's neither mystery nor question.

Agreed.  I've recently arrived at that location a few times myself, wondering as I'm shooting something: "Haven't we seen this before? What's the point?"

the amateur side of the art is entirely open to the individual's personal quest of leaving reality aside, wherever that leads.

And that's why it's so good to be a retired photographer these days, rather than a professional.  We're now amateurs again, in the best sense of the word.  We to it for the love of it.

all they (concepts) do is stifle the model and snapper on the ground. I've been through that one several times myself, and it ends up in tears and lost relationships.

What a shame.  The word "stifle" should never appear in connection with any shoot.

it is all far too late in the circle for personal synchrony with the zeitgeist! For this whirl, at least!

NEVER too late!     "Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

[Rob C]

Agreed.  I've recently arrived at that location a few times myself, wondering as I'm shooting something: "Haven't we seen this before? What's the point?"

And that's why it's so good to be a retired photographer these days, rather than a professional.  We're now amateurs again, in the best sense of the word.  We to it for the love of it.

What a shame.  The word "stifle" should never appear in connection with any shoot.

NEVER too late!    "Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

And you say that wearing shades!

;-)

Rob

[donbga]

Rob

FWIW, IMO the use of faux frame and matts impede the potential impact for online presentation. Nice work otherwise.

[Rob C]

FWIW, IMO the use of faux frame and matts impede the potential impact for online presentation. Nice work otherwise.

It's not as simple as that.

You really have to choose how you want your images to accept contrast outside of them. In other words, were I to process my pictures to view them within white, I'd do one thing, but to be seen within grey or black, another level of internal tonality is required. The same development does not work the same within different backgrounds; try framing one of your own pictures within several different tones of background and see what you conclude. When I process, I automatically create a white border around the job.

My website is tailored to suit the format you see here, and that's all anybody on LuLa or anywhere else is going to get unless they buy a print. Which, as I no longer have a great printer for which I can buy inks (thanks, HP!), means that I may decide never to print again, and so I shall keep the prints I already hold.

In photography, there's usually a reason for everything.

;-)

Rob

[Arlen]

You really have to choose how you want your images to accept contrast outside of them. In other words, were I to process my pictures to view them within white, I'd do one thing, but to be seen within grey or black, another level of internal tonality is required. The same development does not work the same within different backgrounds

I often put borders around my online images for similar reasons. Trouble is, some images look good to me against a darker background, but not as good against a lighter one, no matter how I adjust the development. Jumping between various backgrounds within a single website seems a bad idea, though.

Add my praise to your last three contributions, Rob. All outstanding.

[Rob C]

I often put borders around my online images for similar reasons. Trouble is, some images look good to me against a darker background, but not as good against a lighter one, no matter how I adjust the development. Jumping between various backgrounds within a single website seems a bad idea, though.

Add my praise to your last three contributions, Rob. All outstanding.

Thanks for the kind comment, Arlen, and you're right: some images can't really work on both types of background. It's an extreme example, of course, but the one of the ribs, Ups and Downs, set against black would lose its edges completely and just become part of an extended page, or whatever it's viewed against. There was a similar effect in the old darkrooms, where one had the choice of white plastic, transparent perspex or even coloured developing dishes; they could give you a false impression of what you were processing, as could processing under the wrong safelight, sometimes a red, which wasn't the right choice because for my WSG stuff it should always have been a sort of yellow/green tinged safelight called an OB or something like that -  no longer sure, exactly, of its code so long ago.

The other point about the darkrooom colours, apart from the safety angle, is that you had to become accustomed to a standard, much as with ambient light on monitors, where you unthinkingly understood what a print would end up looking like at the end of the process. Have to say, a wet print on a plastic draining sheet over the wash tank often looked far nicer than it ever could dried. ;-)


Lots of things in photography to make life difficult!

Rob

[Telecaster]

Rob,
I would say your three most recent photos are positively spiffing, and I look forward to many more, as I expect Dave and Aunt Anna do too.

  Properly corrected, I am.

(Attached photo of Aunt Anna & Dave taken in Oban, Scotland, while on a bus/boat tour to the island of Iona, summer 1972. There's an in-joke being shared, thus one face's grin and the other's grimace. Anna was an expert cut-up.)

-Dave-

[Rob C]

  Properly corrected, I am.

(Attached photo of Aunt Anna & Dave taken in Oban, Scotland, while on a bus/boat tour to the island of Iona, summer 1972. There's an in-joke being shared, thus one face's grin and the other's grimace. Anna was an expert cut-up.)

-Dave-

Aunt Anna has a very familiar face; the style of dress and hair are very much of Scotland in those days. You can tell at once that Carnaby Street, insofar as it ever made it up to Scotland, was limited to the very young, and older poseurs like, ahem, fashion photogrsphers I know rather well! But on the other hand, my Ann (wife) was rather keen on style, and often would buy from the makers stuff we'd just photographed... them wuz the days!

If you went to Iona, you did better than I: I made Oban, but never the islands - AKAIR. I just had no local curiosity. Unless you want to include some cameras. I see you already had one... where's the uke or banjo?

;-)

Rob