Ken Smith Photo Journal

Moss

Spring has finally come to the foothills of the North Cascade Mountains. On a rocky outcropping on the land where I live at 3200′ elevation, the moss has begun to propagate.

On a side street in Xilitla, Mexico is a church with a row of churchbells, and on the right late afternoon, a half moon.

I am deep into several projects, and hope to post some examples soon. In the meantime, how about a trip to mexico….

White Tree

More than a few visitors to the recent opening of my nude show were surprised that all of the prints on the wall were shot with film. In fact, one was even made as late as 2005 with an old Burke and James 5×7 view camera, using film large enough you can hold it up to the window like it was already a print. Even with all the digital photography in our lives, there is still something special about shooting with film. I have recently been pulling out my medium format equipment, and I have images in my mind’s eye destined to be made with the 5×7. I have a shelf and a half in the freezer that is stuffed with film. And I’ve even arranged the darkroom sink – moved the ink cartridge filling equipment – so I can develop some 5×7 paper negatives.

I was reminded of the sentiment and the sensibility when I read Mark Tucker’s recent blog post…  http://marktucker.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/went-blind-again/#comments

Make sure you read the comments too, for these photographers are bringing something to discuss that is serious to them. There seems to be a wave bouncing off the shore of digital work, getting many reenthused with film and the machines that expose it. We all have our own reasons, sometimes logical or simply an aesthetic loneliness.

White Tree was made with a film-shooting plastic Holga camera in 1994. I am printing this one 20×20” – one of 10 pieces for a gallery show in Iowa in July.

Yesterday I drove down the mountain to town to ship UPS and get a few groceries. I always carry a camera even for mundane trips…a leftover from my days working for a newspaper, for one never knows what will occur. It was foggy, and on the way home I made a few images in a place we call ‘the cut’. It is a half-mile gash in the rock where water runoff collects in a bog, lots of desiduous trees, and of course the paved road. As I looked over the images this morning, one stood out for its soft color, it’s geometrics. I immediately responded to it.

Fog in the Cut

I was amazed….for as we zoomed in, cut away, removed the unnecessary, the image would become stronger. I would go away with a grease-penciled box around the chosen space, and a size scribbled on the edge. If there was time, I would go make another print to size. Usually there was no time for that, and I just went directly to the guy doing the copy camera work, gave him the specs….and went back to a typewriter to write a cutline caption.

So I now sit at my computer, with the image on the screen. Sometimes, I grab a couple envelopes forming an “L”, and hold them up to the screen, imagining a new border here or there. Sometimes it makes the image much better, or creates a whole new image with a different sense and presence.

Fog in the Cut (crop)

I was going to wait for the new year to begin this journal, but have decided to publish early. I have created a new calendar for 2010 titled Infrared in Nature that will be sold on my zazzle.com store. A calendar by its nature is ‘timely’, so I want to get it out there right away. The image above is Autumn Lake, one of the images in the calendar. You may find the calendar at Infrared in Nature by newwashi.

A nice feature on Zazzle is that it allows you to customize the calendar by choosing different sizes, or styles, or even wire color.