eccles workshop - wednesday

yeah I know i skipped tuesday. will get back to that. mma on location in albequeque. lugging stuff to location getting a little old - more tomorrow.

Anyway a bunch from today. click on the snap below to see the rest.


the high road to taos

i drove the high rode to taos today. some photos on the way up at chimayo, cordova and truchas. the taos pueblo was closed to visitors for sacred celebrations. skipped taos itself. the church has been done by everone. i presume they also patronized every candle shop in town while they were there. sunday traffic in taos is just as jammed up up as trafic in santa fe. would hvae been better to skip and headed straight for the Classical Gas Museum in embudo. what a place and free. talked to the owner/curator but didnt have the nerve to ask how he funds the place. i hope he has some renewable private energy source. the place looks like luna park inside.  

so so day, ready to head inside and switch gears to portraits in the am. all todays snaps with the A7r.  the ouside shots mostly with the Loxia 50, a couple with a 35mm and the museum inside shots with the metabones adapted Canon 24 TS-E. Once again faux Kodachrome color by CaptureOne.

click on my first and likely only ever cat snap to see the gallery. this is the second of the santa fe galleries. the first is acessible from the blog item immediately below.

how do you say rockville pike in spanish...

cerrillos road!  first impresion of santa fe was rockville pike - a 40 shades of brown reincarnation.  this southwestern version of the pike even merits two walmarts between the interstate exit and the hotel. if forewarned is forearmed then i was on the alert. on the alert not to go to the main attraction — the plaza.

i eventually drove through after i had found a different target... when i was kid i had a big tube of interlocking plastic blocks (way before lego hit the scene, the us scene anyway). they were called plastic city if i remember right. i have been po'ed at my mother for at least four and maybe five decades becuase i thought she threw them out. wrong, wrong, was i ever wrong — sorry mom.  obviously, walt disney swiped them and brought them to new mexico and historical disneyized the plaza with them. plastic, disney... heinous!

fortunately, the federal government was unusually helpful today via nps.gov and the national historic register. the big reveal was a neighboorhood historic district just south of plastic plaza.  perfect.  it is called the Don Gaspar Historic District.  no idea who Don Gasper is/was but the place is full of fabulous bunglows and pueblo revival houses. a few sport something called pen tile, a work product of the inmates at the once nearby NM State Penn. place was awesome, three is the charm, santa fe is now meeting expectations. not to mention the killer light. working small towns between here and taos tomorrow before the workshop starts in the evening.

as is usual practice a click on the snap below will jet you off to a smugmug gallery where a thinly edited pile of snaps awaits. all with the A7r and the Zeiss Loxia 50mm — at f/8 or f/11. profs to CaptureOne for the Kodachrome trickery.

 

 

Been months...

been working on lighting and studio skill. Usually posts connect to an uncurated gallery of images on smugmug that I frequently refer to as a contact sheet. Well decided to try an actual contact sheet for snaps of a bottle of cheap (relatively speaking for Highland Park) bottle of Highland Park with four cheap (relativelly speaking by Profoto standards — but not by any other) strobes and modifiers. Shot on Super Sunday AM with the A7r and the Canon 70-300L but since then the 5D Mk III has gained "studio" ascendancy.   

Here is the sequence of shots to get to the answer.  All but the last Sony raws, with CaptureOne adjustments, the last a final, a tiff, that had some light Photoshop retouching and Alien Skin Exposure film emulation applied.

No links, just an actual contact sheet.

 

 

Delayed reaction

Lots of new stuff, no new blog posts. A whole lot of stuff around Baltimore, driving less enjoying the photography more. A number of smugmug posts, links below a representitve shot, well one of the better ones that happens to be representitive.

No link on the image, links belowThe first link is to a rolling 2014 gallery so only the images at the end are new...

http://jnash.smugmug.com/Joe/Mr-Bill/Pseudo-Mr-Bill-2014/

http://jnash.smugmug.com/Joe/Mr-Bill/Todays-Sept-28th-Mr-Bill/

http://jnash.smugmug.com/Joe/Mr-Bill/Schizophrenic-Houses/

http://jnash.smugmug.com/Joe/Mr-Bill/Ethnicity/

http://jnash.smugmug.com/Joe/Mr-Bill/Emissions-Test/

http://jnash.smugmug.com/Joe/Mr-Bill/October-Morning-Early/

http://jnash.smugmug.com/Joe/Baltimore/The-Dubs-of-Butchers-Hill-/

http://jnash.smugmug.com/Joe/Baltimore/Greenmount/

 

Look and Feel

Continue to try to find the right look for both B&W and color. Recently took a shot at a different look for B&W and redid a bunch of the Jay Maisel due diligence NYC visit in January 2013. Shot in a different style than it would be today — with the 70-300 on the 5D Mk III with a lot of the now depricated verticals. Look courtesy of a VSCO Film Fuji Neopan 400 emulation variant.

Click the snap for the rest.

Star Spangled Weekend snaps reachable from the blog posts below.

and additionally, snaps from the workshop with Maisel.

 

Holy shit!

The first words out of my mouth and truer words have never been said. While Baltimore does great fireworks, tonites replay of the 1814 repulse of the Brits, was without peer, at least in my experience (and I have seen a fair number of these things) and truely over the top. Five barges, from Fort Mc Henry to the Inner harbor (normally we get two) plus stuff firing off buildings downtown. Simply spectactular.

Two galleries, one with a normal focal length (45mm) from the Sony A7r and a 70-300 on the Canon 5D Mk III. Could have used more cameras, although tonite, the Canon had a mind of its own, choosing settings I didn't know it had. So I couldn't handle two much less five.

As is usual on this blog click the snaps below to see all of the rest on Smugmug.

Pow! Bam! Kaboooom!

Oh, as nice as tonite was, today was pretty non-conducive for much of an airshow. Blue Angles on again tomorrow, plus a ton of other stuff in Patterson Park (the Gov and his Irish Band, Navy Sky Divers, ...). So more posts will be forthcomming.

45mm — Ft. Mc Henry on the left70-300mm

Doings at the park

part of the Star Spangled Banner 200th anniversary.  Not much to say except the food trucks were the most interesting. One last post to come.  Blue Angels... not so interesting either. Plenty noisy though. Click the sanp to OD on ennui.

Cease fire

Between the Blue Angles practice and the real thing and then the fireworks some shots around the photography venue — the fourth floor porch, balcony whatever it is called. All wide open with the Canon 85 @1.2, on the A7r manually focused. Click on the snap for the rest.


Mega merge

Certainly couldn't do it if I tried.  The best of all the attempts to get some context in a Blue Angles shot — and a quite unintended merge.  Well there is always the rest of the weekend

The flag at Patterson Park

On the Avenue

No, not that avenue.  Not really even actually an avenue but a street — 36th Street in Hampden, its sobriquet being "The Avenue". Up early for a holiday, not many others out. Since this wasn't meant to be a people kind of street excursion, it was good. Once again the A7r with the Nikon 20 in pursuit of formal composition. No shortage of leading lines.

Click on the snap below to see the rest on Smugmug.


The quintessential Hampden establishment

High Plains and Misdemeanors

A trip through what the USGS calls 13d - the High Plains, at least part of the part in Eastern Colorado.  First that and then Denver.  Four days with snaps, here is the rota:

Day 1: Genoa, Arriba, Flagler, Siebert, Vona, Stafford

Day 2: Cheyenne Wells, Kit Carson, Wild Horse, Hugo, Denver (from Hotel)

Day 3: Kiowa, Calhan, Ramah, Simla, Matheson, Denver (Lo Do and Da Vita HQ)

Day 4: Denver (Colfax in Goosetown, a few residential snaps, a few in Cherry Creek)

Click on the snaps below to see the contact sheets - The captions indicate the days.  Great weather, until the typical Colorado afternoon cloudbursts. All with the A7r and mostly with the Sony/Ziess 55 1.8.  The Denver Lo Do snaps with the Nikon 20. Back to the grindstone early in the AM.

Slow uploads from the hotel, so likely another hour before they are all uploaded.  Not very consistent with the thinly curated contact sheet approach.

Day 1: Vona, CODay 2: Cheyenne Wells, CODay 3: Ramah, CODay 4: Goosetown, Colfax Avenue, Denver

I have heard it said...

that Baltimore is the New Brooklyn. So Mark Supik, next door, has taken upon himself to adapt the title of Betty Smith's 1943 novel.  He is "building" a new tree in what he calls the Empty Tree Pit project. Continuing with the mid-centuy theme, ala Joe Friday you can get all the facts, right here at the Empty Tree Pit BlogSpot. I got an email from the Supiks the other day annoucing the effort, along with some encouragement to take some snaps — not like a lot of encouragement was needed. So click on the snap below to see the tree from almost every available angle. BTW, it is not clear from the snap below whether the local tree experts are ready to accept it as one of thiers.

Really cool this tree.  Apparently there are nine more segments to go.  Mark says they are all finished but he is only adding one a day.  I am off on the road for a few days so I guess it will be a lot taller when next I get to shoot it. Presumably it is going to take a wider agle lens then.

Shot with the a7r with the Canon 45 TS-E and the Canon 100 Macro.  A number of the 45 TS-E snaps are using tilt to diminish the background.

Maybe next time when that guy isn't watching

Road Trip

A dose of cabin fever, coupled with the desire to fix the Carrie Furnace no batteries fiasco of several years ago - so off to Pittsburg on a last minute whim.  Hmmm, maybe a little too underplanned.  Rain in the forecast for Saturday, a Pirates game across from the hotel and a ticket for a guided tour.  

Ugh, traffic worse than Manhattan (everything in P'burg is worse than Manhattan — unfortunately), steady rain Saturday morning and a Carrie Furnace pipsqueek with a severe napolonic complex - "guided is guided". Bagged the furnaces (both short and long term - over photoed now in any case) and set off to some backup sites.

The ball game provided a closed Clemente bridge (the northernmost of three matched self-anchored suspension bridges in a short six block space over the last half mile of the Alleghany.  The others heading south are the Andy Wharhol (obviously the same evaluation of the relative merits of the two waterbound cities) and Rachel Carson (apparently from just up the Ohio). Lots of bridge shots with PNC Park (didn't it have a better name before being commercialized) in the background.  A few more around the hotel (right at the downtown side of the Clemente bridge, wrapped up by a few in the morning rain in Historic (ahem) Braddock, PA.  BTW, General Braddock has his name splashed on pretty much everything that doesn't say PNC on it in the greater P'burg region and out to very exburbs.

From there US 30, to US 119 and finally US 40 back to Cumberland, MD and the stunning I68 for the sprint back to B'more.

Lots of lenses in the bag but only the Nikkor 20 and the Canon 45 TS-E saw any use on the A7r. Pretty much trying to stay in the Friedlander mode with the 20, less sucessfully, faux Stephen Shore and Walker Evans with the 45 TS-E. One Evans knockoff in Mt. Pleasant of the WWI memorial (see below).  The towns along 119 surprisingly have very vibrant downtowns and for some unknown reason a plethora of Marriott properties. That intersection looks like a combo that will get worked, starting in the fall. Three F. L. Wright houses in the vicinity. All within in about a three hour drive of home. All good.

Four galleries, two each for P'burg and the US 119 corridor, split in B&W and color.  Color is pretty much done, B&W are just getting started. Click per the snap captions to head off to the respective gallery.

Click for P'burg Color gallery

Click for P'burg B&W gallery

Click for 119 Color gallery

Click for 119 B&W gallery

Getting drugs...

some Rx needed refills, so off to CVS on Exeter Street in Harbor East. Brought the A7r but wasn't sure what was going to be available to shoot, so I put on the street-people/compromise Canon FD 28 f/2.0.  Looks like the Yankee fans have left town because the place was empty - like 1960's Kennebunkport on Labor Day afternoon empty. Nothing much on the street so it got pointed mostly up.

Click on the image below for the rest.

Four Squares...

not houses but sunflowers from the McKee-Besher Wildlfe Management Area in Poolesville, MD — cropped square. All B&W, the one below with the 14mm Canon, the rest with the 55mm Sony-Zeiss — all on the A7r.

Yesterday afternoon — not such a brilliant idea vis-a-vis traffic. Friday night in the summer on 95NB (avoided via MD-200 and US 29) and the Yankees playing the Orioles at a sold-out Camden Yards, unavoidable even including a eastern diversion to 895.

All B&W because everyone else's will be in color — the meetup photography groups are attending in regiment if not batalion sized groups. Only four because, well... the rest look like everyone else's even in B&W. Click on the snap below to see it and the other three bigger, if not full size.

p.s. Likely the sole "wilderness" excursion for the year. Will pass on the insects, back to the streets and alleys.

For some reason I thought I was facing north at 5PM. Clueless