Oddments

And welcome to the New Year.

I thought I would start off the year by finishing up or building on a few bits from the past postings, kind of like leftovers from the photographic fridge (and I really did keep film in the fridge way back when the great yellow box Kodak was king).

My last postings were mainly about aspects of photography; what I did on my vacation, where I like to shoot and what I like as subject material (which as I said can be a lot of things). Also I think of myself a funny guy (maybe I should say a guy with a sense of humor) and that sense can apply to things I see and photograph.

Here’s an example, I took a photograph of a beautiful old MG on the street. I really liked the car, the photograph turned out well too. But there was something more in the photograph that I don’t think many people see. If you look closely in the chrome you’ll begin to pick out lettering. Now this is backwards but if you look you’ll see TOYOTA. When I shot this I was, as I said, on the street and across from a Toyota dealership.

MG on Queen Street, Toronto, ON

I haven’t been as much into infrared photographs as I once was. Part of the issue with me is that I usually don’t carry around a tripod when I’m oot and aboot on hikes and the filter required to take ‘digital’ infrared photographs requires extremely long exposures, way beyond my capacity to hand hold the camera. I thought I’d include a couple infrared photographs here partly to hang up a couple images on the digital wall and partly just to revisit the images.

Schmendrick

One image I like very much (and a copy of it used to be in a bank in Barrie, ON of all places) is of a cat I had by the name of Schmendrick.

Ties and Weeds

The other infrared image I’m including here was taken in a vanished space, the old railroad yards in downtown Toronto. It’s just a bunch of ties and a weed growing up against it but because of the infrared effect it makes it almost magical to my mind and the gap in the ties becomes a window to a different reality.

Tree at the rim of the Grand Canyon

I’ve talked about my love of the black and white photograph in past postings and I’ve included a couple of images from the vault that I’ve always liked. The first is of a tree that was situated at the side of the Grand Canyon. I think this may have been the shot I was taking when I lost a lens cap over the edge.

Montezuma's Castle

Another area that fascinated me, like many other archeological sites, was the area called ‘Montezuma’s Castle’ (although as I recall the big ‘M’ never actually was there). I would have loved to be allowed to wander through the dwelling but never had the opportunity to do so. Here is an overall view of the site.

Canyon Country

Another image from the American west is basically a landscape portrait. This features another aspect of  the photograph that I liked to play with, grain. In many of the infrared photographs I’ve already included in the blog you can see how grain plays an integral part in the creation of mood. I used grain for much the same reason in more ‘normal’ black and white photographs as in this instance. I used particular developers when I developed the film in order to enhance the effect. Images don’t always have to be, well sharp or clear doesn’t exactly cover what I’m attempting to say, they can also be, hmmm, I guess I’ll just have to say textured. I hope that works.