Why Film Still Rocks

I don't talk about techniques or equipment very often, because there are so many blogs and websites devoted to those subjects already... and I am generally more concerned about the artistic result, not how I get there. Today's post will be an exception, so if you're not into the finer points of image quality and printing your work, this one probably won't interest you much.
Many, perhaps most, people are satisfied if their photos look good on their blog or on-line photo gallery, which is fine and good... and almost any image WILL look fine in those environments. I won't imply that any tool or technology is right or wrong, but I wanted to try to explain how and why my own particular method has changed. 
So as an example, here at the top we have a full frame 4"x5" image that I just shot in Utah, scanned from a Fujifilm Velvia color transparency. (This is not the actual full-resolution image, of course, but the following crops are. Please click on the full frame for a bigger version first, though).
This was scanned at 1200 ppi, which resulted in a 5735 x 4584 (26.3 megapixel) image and a 75+MB file size (.tif format... a jpeg file would be much smaller, but jpegs are destructive, as you know:)  This is nowhere near the maximum resolution that film can be scanned, it just makes an easily manageable file size for most common purposes, i.e. web posting or small-to-medium sized prints.  In this case, if printed at 240 ppi, which I find to be very adequate on my printer, the resulting print would measure 19" x 24", a pretty healthy size for framing. Bigger than that, I would simply increase the scan resolution to 2400 ppi, or more if necessary.  The film itself remains intact and unchanged as your analog "RAW" file.. you can always go back and start over from the original source, just as you would from a digital RAW file.

To demonstrate the incredible amount of visual information captured here, I have framed four quite small areas of the larger image in pink and included a 100%, full-resolution crop of each highlighted area, so you can see the detail to be had. Click on each to get the full 1-1 pixel resolution. These are unadjusted and unsharpened, as is the top full frame, other than the standard optimization used during scanning. With a little work any of them could stand alone, I think. Pretty cool, eh? Notice the clarity and definition in the blades of grass, tree bark, small twigs and the individual leaves (you can count 'em if you want!) and the lack of colors bleeding into each other from overblown pixels, or fringing in high contrast areas that you often see in digital-capture files.
The last sample is a side-by-side matchup to a digital capture, shot from almost the same spot one day before.. I tried to get as close to the same spot as possible with the crop.. (you can see a round spot on the rock and a tilted tree that match) and you will notice how it resembles an impressionist painting by comparison. I did add a little sharpening to the digital image to make it half-way comparable. Honestly, I was kind of stunned at the difference. Now to be fair, my digital camera is no longer state-of-the-art at 12 MP, but even the highest-end current DSLRs costing $7 - 8K barely touch this resolution, which as I said, is actually pretty low for medium or large format film. I suspect a medium format digital capture would look very close, but medium format (6x6, 6x7, etc) digital cameras/backs can easily cost the equivalent of a luxury car before you even talk about lenses, accessories, etc. This becomes a cost/benefit situation.  The cheapest digital back that would fit on my Mamiya 6x7 starts at a cool $10K for 22MP, just for the back... and I can buy a whole lotta film for $10K. (And, the film is still better, just less CONVENIENT). The new Leaf/Aptus 80MP back goes for about $32K.. I can easily produce an 80MP file from this transparency without spending another penny. There are some more "affordable" medium format digital cameras coming out around $10K (Pentax 645D), but we'll have to wait and see how they do, I'm not sure where the market is for something like that.  The camera that took this photo cost me under $1000 brand new (it is beautifully hand-made by a small company of large-format enthusiasts in China and is a work of art in itself), plus a nice, good-as-new German made lens that I picked up on EBay for $350. Unlike a digital camera, it will not be out of date next year... or in 10 years. The basic design has already been around for the better part of a century.  Workflow after scanning is exactly the same.. process with Adobe Camera RAW as far as possible, add adjustment layers in Photoshop to fine tune... and then off to print, website, or wherever. I actually find I need less messing around with "film raw".. the colors are richer and more right-on right from the start.

Does any of this matter to the "quality" of a photograph?  Yes and no.  It certainly can't improve improve the light, the composition, the color, the timing, the concept.. all those things that make up a good photograph as a whole, but there IS a certain expectation and respect for detail and print quality when it comes to landscape art, so from that perspective it is certainly a big advantage in at least one area. Disadvantages? Without doubt more cumbersome and slow to work with, no zoom lenses, no sophisticated built in light meter, no instant preview, no instant 5 shot bracketing to cover your exposure mistakes, but somehow it just feels more like the "real deal", at least the way I originally learned and fell in love with it, and had almost forgotten.

I think that's enough about large format, for today at least. Shooting in medium format is much closer to working with a typical digital SLR, while image detail remains superior... and it's very cost-effective. I find it to be an excellent compromise. I'll talk a little about that sometime soon.

The Mathematics of Nature

Bryce Canyon Sunrise - Utah

Something a little different for this post, inspired by a TV documentary that I saw a few months back, about mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot.

We tend to think of math and geometry as applying to man-made objects.. they have width, height, length and angles that can be expressed and measured in ways that we are familiar with. Nature on the other hand, may seem to be random and chaotic, totally free from the laws of math and geometry. Not so. Mandebrot discovered the formulas that can express most forms of nature in mathematical terms.. it's just a different kind of math, known as "fractals"... the term that he coined for it.
In reality, many of the the most amazing things in the natural world follow these fractal formulas: trees and plants, waves, mountain ranges, canyons, clouds, coastlines, even the capillaries within our bodies are all examples.
I'm strictly a visual person, certainly no math whiz... (one year of engineering in college and I realized that my calling was going to be elsewhere), but it's interesting to realize that everything really is tied together, art and science, if you look at it from the right perspective.  I leave it to you to read further if you're interested... I came across a really cool website that explains a lot of this in very visual and easy to understand terms here.. most artists, photographers and just plain nature lovers will think: "wow.. this makes total sense!", when they look at these pages.  It goes into other art-realated topics also, such as the "golden proportion", known by artists for centuries, and seems to be part of our innate, human sense of beauty. 

So, what is an artist's interest in all this? Well, computers have made the application of fractal formulas easy and practical.  The other images here (click for a larger view) are ones that I generated using a 3D terrain modeling software. The natural features... rocks, clouds, dunes and even the textures, are all created with fractal math.. there is no actual picture mapping utilized anywhere in the image.  I didn't go all out with the detail.. I could keep working for an even more photo-realistic effect, but this is good enough for a comparison to the real photo of Bryce Canyon at the top of this post.

It's basically "virtual photography"... the "camera" acts just like the real deal.. move it around as you wish, select the focal length, depth of field..everything.  Of course all the basic principles apply: composition, texture, color theory and lighting.  If only the real world was so easy though... you can literally carve and move mountains, then choose the time of day, along with a control of the elements limited only by your imagination. If you've watched a sci-fi, fantasy or animated movie in the last ten years or so, you've surely seen a much more sophisticated use of this technology, but this was done just sitting here at home on my everyday computer.  The tree was an afterthought as I was writing and took about 5 minutes to compose and render!

Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles,

and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line.
—Mandelbrot, in his introduction to The Fractal Geometry of Nature

Feelin' Abstract

It's a rare day out that I don't spend at least part of my time focusing on abstract details.. sometimes just to kill time while waiting on the light, or sometimes because I find some genuinely interesting subjects. Much of it turns out to be junk of course, but every once in a while I snag one that looks just right somehow, at least to my eye. Very much a matter of personal taste; some people find the "picture" in this pure shape/color/texture and others don't react to it at all, but Mother Nature is an abstract expressionist, for sure.

Water Study (Part 2), and a New Series on Influential Artists

As promised in my previous Water Study post, here is another, completely different interpretation of the same subject, this time in color. Since it was a "local" subject and I was in no hurry, it was possible to spend more time than I normally might working a very limited area, trying to construct as many variations as possible from this little area of falls. It's not just one grand fall, but a series of cascades wandering all around the rocks and trees below a mountain lake, so there are certainly many different possibilities to be had. This type of "intimate landscape" leads me into a new subject I've been mulling over for a while: I would like to give mention to some of the greats of photography (and art) that have shaped my vision, as well as a few of the contemporary people whose work I admire. So I'm going to occasionally steer you to some different sites that I feel are worth visiting if you are at all interested in the masters that have paved the road to where we are today, or some current artists that are very worthy of attention.

Some of the people I have in mind are very well documented and represented on the web; at least one that I want to refer to is surprisingly hard to find, so I'll start with an easy one because I found an excellent website covering his work: Eliot Porter. Probably the first great color landscape photographer, his show,"Intimate Landscapes" in 1980 was the first one-man show ever of color photography at New York's Metropolitan Museum and he was one of the first masters to catch my imagination during my younger days in art school. I won't repeat a lot of info about him here, because this website is concise and full of samples.
I'll mention others as they come to mind, or seem to tie in with my own examples; probably mostly photographers, but some other types of artists too... as well as some fellow bloggers that I have found since I started doing this blog. I know that with photography in particular, lots of people have been taken up in a sudden fascination on the subject and haven't necessarily looked into the history of what got us here, so I hope I can turn a few of you on to some great work that might inspire you even further. And I would certainly love to hear back from anyone who has their own favorite masters or contemporaries that they would like to share.

Water Study: Time Provides Perspective

This image and a color one to come, were both taken over one year ago near our home in the southern California mountain community of Idyllwild. I made about 40 exposures over the course of several hours, working on the waterfall flowing out of a small local lake. (Hard to call it a "waterfall" compared to one like this, but they can't all be epic:) The whole session has been languishing in my "digital negative cabinet" since then. I had looked through the exposures several times and played briefly with a few, but just had it in my mind that there was nothing really worth developing from this session. Something about the quality of light or color of the rocks just wasn't sitting right with me at the time.

As I've talked about before, it very often pays off to go back and rework things after some time has passed.. shots that you think great in the excitement of reviewing them while brand new, can be evaluated more honestly after the attachment we feel to them has faded. Even better, as in this case, you may find something very worthy that you completely overlooked. Just consider that whatever skill level you are currently at, your eye and technique are constantly changing and developing.

The Story of "A Vagabond for Beauty"

A small article in the local paper caught my eye and my interest recently, and after searching into it further, the story began to resonate with me on so many levels that I thought it would make for an intriguing entry. I know that many of my readers are fellow photographers, artists, or nature lovers, so hopefully some will appreciate this as much as me. It may mean more or less to you depending on your experience with art history and the lure of the American West.

"There is a splendid freedom in solitude, and after all, it is for solitude that I go to the mountains and deserts, not for companionship. In solitude I can bare my soul to the mountains unabashed. I can work or think, act or recline at my whim, and nothing stands between me and the Wild."

-Everett Ruess

In November of 1934, a young 20 year old man named Everett Ruess, traveling alone except for two burros and some basic gear, as he had been for much of the previous four years, set out down the Hole in the Rock trail from the town of Escalante, in south central Utah, intending to explore further south towards the Colorado River. He was never seen again after that day... and the mystery of his disappearance became a legendary mystery that remained unsolved for nearly 75 years. What catches the imagination is that he was an extremely talented artist, writer, poet and experienced explorer even at his young age.

Ruess's family lived in Los Angeles and after graduating school, he left normal life behind to wander up the California coast, into Yosemite and the Sierras, sketching and photographing the natural wonders along the way and keeping a detailed record of his thoughts and travels, mostly in the form of letters back home to his family. He explored Yosemite, Sequoia N.P. and the High Sierras in 1930 and '33; Arizona, Utah and Colorado in 1931, '32 & '34. Those letters were compiled into a book called "A Vagabond for Beauty" and form a journal of insights and experiences from some of the most desolate and beautiful areas one could ever hope to see. I have added the book to my Amazon sidebar.. you can click on it to read some sample pages (don't worry, it doesn't cost anything to just look!)

He was one hell of an accomplished writer for his age and was fearless about introducing himself to some of the most established artists of the day. One early trip took him to Carmel, CA where he describes seeking out Edward Weston at his house there... exploring the Point Lobos area and doing artwork with Weston's sons, Bret and Cole and sleeping in their garage. He later stayed with renowned western painter Maynard Dixon and his then wife, photographer Dorothea Lang (who took some of the best pictures of him), as well as photographer Ansel Adams.

He made drawings for reference, then back home in Los Angeles would work them up as linoleum block prints, very simple and graphic, which he could in turn trade for necessities on future travels. There is a site devoted to his artwork and writings here. Probably he was far from reaching his full potential as an artist and who knows how good he might have become had he lived past 20 years.

Some of you who saw the movie "Into the Wild" may think Ruess's story sounds kind of familiar; there is indeed an eerie similarity between Everett's life and that of Chris McCandless decades later, in fact Jon Krakauer devoted a whole section of his book to Ruess for that reason, although it was not covered in the movie. It seems they both wanted to leave their old selves behind: McCandless traveled under the name "Alexander Supertramp" and Ruess is known to have carved "Nemo" ("nobody" in Latin) at some of the places he camped in the desert.

Now, the last chapter of his story is complete. Researchers at the University of Colorado have used DNA from some bones discovered recently, 60 miles from Escalante, to verify that the mystery of Everett's vanishing is pretty much solved. As has been proven many times, events rarely happen a vacuum... so in the early 1970's, a Navajo man named Aneth Nez was told by a tribal medicine man to unburden himself of a secret that he had carried since his youth, when he sat up on a ridge one day and witnessed some Ute Indian boys chase down and murder a young white man to steal his belongings. Not wishing the body to be left exposed and alone, Nez went down and buried it in some nearby rocks. He told the story to his granddaughter and she in turn just last year relayed it her younger brother, who made it his personal mission to search the area his grandfather had described, at last finding bones and some other artifacts along with his grandfather's saddle, which had been left at the scene because it was covered in blood. This part of the tale is written up with great detail this month in "National Geographic Adventure" magazine and you can read part of it for free on their website. There was also a documentary film made in 2000, numerous magazine articles have speculated about Everett's fate, musician Dave Alvin of the Blasters and others have written songs about him and there is in recent years an annual art festival bearing his name in Escalante.

I guess my fascination with all this lies in the overlap of names and places from this tale with many of the same ones that have been influential to me personally. You could say Weston and Adams are two of my idols and I can only imagine how great it would have been to meet them at a young age... and I have been awed to experience even briefly some of the places that Ruess was so devoted to, especially the Grand Staircase region of Utah where he ultimately ended up staying forever, as he would have wished anyway, I'm sure.

"I have not tired of the wilderness; rather I enjoy its beauty and the vagrant life I lead, more keenly all the time. I prefer the saddle to the streetcar and star-sprinkled sky to a roof, the obscure and difficult trail, leading into the unknown to any paved highway, and the deep peace of the wild to the discontent bred by cities."

... as to when I revisit civilization, it will not be soon. I have not tired of the wilderness... It is enough that I am surrounded with beauty... This had been a full, rich year. I have left no strange or delightful thing undone I wanted to do.

- from the last letter Ruess sent to his brother, dated November 11, 1934.

Oh yeah,... my two pieces (both are linked to larger versions for this post): for the color one, I caught the early light of a winter morning on some bare cottonwood trees along the Virgin River in Zion Canyon. The monochrome image is of Metate Arch in the Devil's Garden, found about 20 miles down Hole in the Rock road, south of Escalante, and very likely a spot that Reuss passed on his last fateful journey.

Finding Hidden Gems

Sometimes, when I don't have any new images to work on (which is actually quite often since I don't tend to work much locally around where I live), I like to dig into my "digital negatives" of past sessions.
After a 3 or 4 day trip, I may have 150-200 exposures to go over(not that many compared to some people, I know), and I then go through a selection process where I assign star ratings to sort out the ones I'm pretty sure have potential, a second level that may or may not work, and finally, to leave out the ones that don't seem to have any potential at all. I'm pretty critical during this process; in the first go-round, I look only at the thumbnails, because I feel a really strong shot will come across even in miniature format, where you might not even be able to tell what it is... there's just something about the abstract shapes and tones that somehow works. Of course during the next phase, I might open a supposed winner to look in detail and find something that kills it, or a so-so looking image may come to beautiful life after a little tweaking. All of this is usually done in an inspired rush of first impressions and gut feelings when I get back home to the studio; the downside is that I sometimes pass over some good stuff, making it fun and productive to reprocess marginal images or even take a stab at some of the ones I completely ignored the first time around.
This is one of those... I took a second look at it after more than a year. Probably during the initial sorting process I was concentrating on bigger and more dramatic views and thought this was too simple or too flat, but after adjusting it to bring out the light and texture, I find this one really pleasing and peaceful, almost meditative to look at... there's a lot to be said for letting some time pass before you judge your own work.
This little piece of tumbleweed had blown down inside the canyon and lodged in a way that made it seem to be basking in sun from the slot above and growing right out of the rock. The textures of the rock remind me of a continuous brush stroke, flowing from lower left to upper right.

First Kiss of Dawn

"First Kiss of Dawn" - Eastern Sierra

Ahh.. what better place to be on a freezing December 31 morning than all alone among miles of hills and boulders, beneath the eastern wall of the Sierra Nevada mountains, waiting with your camera for the sun to come up? This particular area has thousands of fascinating granite formations and is right at the foot of the spectacular peaks surrounding Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in the lower 48 states. Many old movies and TV shows like The Lone Ranger, Bonanza and Treasure of Sierra Madre were filmed here because of the unique western landscape of rocks and snow capped mountains, and it's still popular for commercials and movies. When my wife first saw this, she thought the subject rocks looked like two figures kissing, hence the title of this one. You can see some snowy peaks off on the left horizon, the distance exaggerated by a wide angle lens.

Looks Like Winter, but..

..it's not. And, it's not Bryce Canyon either, for those who might think so. This is Cedar Breaks, similar to Bryce with it's characteristic red rock hoodoos and high country forest, but quite a bit smaller, although still huge and impressive by most standards. This is a single, large amphitheater carved out of the side of a mountain, about (I'm guessing here without checking the map) 60-70 miles west of Bryce and a bit north of Zion. It may look like a winter scene, but I actually shot this on October 1 of last year, during my annual "foliage hunt". The east side of the mountain is covered with aspen groves and lava fields that run 30 miles or so from here on the rim at 10,500 ft., down towards the Red Canyon and Bryce areas at somewhat lower elevation. You can see a bit of foliage if you look towards the top center of the frame. The day before this, I drove along the rim in near white-out blizzard conditions, and would not have gone considerably out of my way to get back here on my way home, except that I knew it had to be really beautiful after the fresh snow. Without the snow, this would probably be a pretty boring "viewpoint" shot, but I like the way the white creates a nice design against the darker shapes of the rocks and forest. The one open slope there in the middle was catching a bit of sunlight on an otherwise cloudy day.
I haven't been doing this, but for this post you can click the image for a LARGE view and enjoy the detail and textures in all their glory.

A Secret World

I was debating where to go this week (subject-wise) and finally decided that the canyon thing might be interesting to pursue further.  I usually prefer to discuss art rather than travel related stuff, but several people commented on my last post that they were unfamiliar with the subject of slot canyons and several others indicated their plans to seek out some themselves this year.  In light of that, I have to mention Antelope Canyon in Arizona, right near the border with Utah and at the base of Lake Powell, near the Glen Canyon dam.

Many serious nature photographers from all over the world know about this place and let me tell you, a whole lot of them make the pilgrimage to get here every year. It's the Mecca of slot canyons and unfortunately gets quite crowded most days.  It lies on Navajo Indian land, so you need to hire one of the several guide services that share rights to bring people in here. They will transport you from the little nearby town of Page, right up to the opening that you see here in the middle pic, then take you on through for a certain amount of time, depending on the tour you purchase. If you want to do any serious photography, you'll need to pay a little more for the 2 1/2 hour photo session that most of the guides offer. That will give you, besides enough time to work, a referee of sorts for your limited size group, and they will at least try to keep the other groups separated and out of your way in each of several good spots. The guide for my group even played an indian flute for us while inside to enhance the mood. Even so, you will need to be patient and a bit aggressive to get the good angles. Fortunately, the exposures in here are quite long, so even if someone walks through your shot while your shutter is open, (and they will) they'll show up little if at all. Sometimes the "ghost" effect is even kind of cool. Some of the more casual tourists are not too concerned about kicking up dust as they shuffle about, either. 

I believe they used to let people in here by themselves after paying a fee, but it got too crowded to manage that way and also there is the danger of flash flooding. Rain so far away that you don't even know it's falling can rush through here suddenly and it's all over if you happen to be inside, so they are careful about watching the weather.  In 1997, eleven tourists from France, Sweden and the U.K. were caught in the lower Antelope Canyon and drowned. One somehow managed to survive.

The upper, vertical shot is taken from outside, right at the entrance and you can see some people with their point and shoot cameras.. once again,  good for scale reference, although it gets much larger inside. Some spots are comfortably wide, others are very narrow, so hopefully you don't have claustrophobia! The larger, third image is actually far from one of my best from this shoot, but I think it is reasonably good at expressing what it's like inside this mysterious place. If you're lucky, you'll catch a sunbeam shining down from above onto the floor! 

A Nice Day by the Ocean (part four)

Getting to the fun part now - almost sunset, but a little darker than it would normally be due to the heavy cloud cover.  No complaints though, since a dark, ominous sky is often the ideal for this kind of scene.  If any, my gripe would be that the weather is too nice around here most of the time. The slight crack right on the horizon allowing some color to come through really makes it for me, whereas if it was all dark gray it wouldn't have been nearly as interesting. I guess I could have chosen an even longer exposure and completely softened out the ocean, but kind of like seeing a little shape left in the waves.

I've shot this area late in the day many times, but there are so many possible variables with the tide, waves, weather, etc., that it always ends up looking completely different.

A Nice Day by the Ocean (part three)

Continuing on another 30 minutes or so, what I have here is essentially two versions of the same subject in two different kinds of light. The first is very soft and low contrast while the light was being filtered through the clouds, and the second has a lot more definition as the sun managed to peak out near the horizon and create a really nice side-lighting effect and also give that beautiful russet color typical of the late afternoon. The gulls were cooperative subjects, posing nicely while I was shooting away with the light changing almost moment by moment. Still haven't decided which of these I prefer; I'll be interested in which gets the better reaction. To me, the second, besides the nice light, has more depth although I like the atmosphere of the first also.
I actually have several more decent variations on this one which I won't bore you with; eventually I'll pick the one I feel works best overall.

The Joshua Trees

Another rich location that is close to home for me (reasonably at 2 1/2 - 3 hours) is Joshua Tree National Park. About an hour northeast of Palm Springs, it's probably not as well known as some of the other parks around the southwest, but it's a huge (over 500,000 acres), uncrowded area with loads of unique and interesting landscapes.. great for photographers & painters (also campers and rock climbers). It includes 2 different desert climate zones, the Colorado and the Mojave, and you can find an unlimited variety of awesome rock formations, plants, wildflowers and wildlife. You can hike out into the rocks and wander around all day and not see another soul if you don't want to. The Joshua Trees are actually a variety of cactus, but they grow tall with many branches and in large groves; thus the "tree" in the name. The Mojave climate is higher, cooler and wetter so they thrive here. (Look really close almost dead center in this image and you will see 2 people sitting out in the boulders.. I left them in for a sense of scale. The rising moon seems really small due to the wide angle lens).

"Evening Light" - Joshua Tree

Goodbye, Mr. Wyeth

Andrew Wyeth passed away the other day. Although he was a painter, any photographer aspiring to improve could study Wyeth's work and learn everything they need to know. Anyone can operate a camera, that's the least of what it's about; if you can absorb some of his sense of space, composition and detail, you will make better photographs.
I know that some critics didn't care for his realism in this age of abstraction, but to me he was a profound influence and inspiration. His watercolor sketches are like Chinese brush drawings in their simplicity; with just a few strokes on an otherwise blank paper he could create a whole scene of hills, snow and woods and make you feel the cold. And his tempera paintings have a photographic sensibility and a feeling of story to them that I don't often see in paintings. A love of nature, an amazingly keen sense of observation and dedication to craft really set him apart, in my mind.