Mark Cassino Photography - Mark's Blog

Last week Pam and I headed out to Annapolis, Maryland, to attended the artist’s reception for the Maryland Federation of Art American Landscapes 2006 exhibit. I was happy to see that one of my two pieces in the show – Weedy Sassafras – won an honorable mention.

The MFA show was extremely strong, and it was a pleasure to talk with the various artists and visitors on hand for the reception. The show was open to all media, and paintings dominated the selections with a good representation of photography and other media present as well.

Annapolis is a wonderful town, with 18th century houses, narrow streets, and lots of sailors and navy cadets hanging around. We had first visited in 2004 to attend another gallery reception – this one included Abandoned Perch – and in that trip did a lot of walking through the city, exploring the narrow streets and great shops and restaurants.

The historic district bristles with art galleries, and there is always something interesting to see. A few doors down from the MFA gallery, at 14 State Circle, was a retrospective of picture maker Marion E. Warren, a notable photographer of the Chesapeake bay area. The crisp, clean, and clear black and white images were marvelous. This work and the Harry Callahan exhibit in Chicago are the best photography I’ve seen all year. A sampling of Warren's Photos can be found at he wesbite d of the Annapolis Publishing Collection, and you can read more in two articles from the Bay Weekly - from September 2006 and an earlier 1998 article..

One thing notable in both Harry Callahan and Marion Warren’s work is how they really push the contrast in their shots – and are not shy about letting the shadows go to full black. Aesthetically, they don’t have a whole lot in common, but they do seem to share a similar approach to printing.

For my part – the trip to Annapolis time round was not very productive in terms of photography. We were only there two days. The first day was spent at Mount Vernon, which was enjoyable, and then at the reception in the evening. The second day was spent exploring Maryland’s east coast – an area that has lots of photographic possibilities (reminded me a bit of Allegan, only with better architecture) but the single day’s outing under cloudy skies lead to few images.

On the plus side, I wound up pulling out the several rolls of film I shot 2 years ago (cripes – two years ago I didn’t even have a digital SLR…) and since I’ve never scanned, evaluated, or printed any of the shots, it seems like a good project to finally get around to. (One good thing about this blog is it keeps me current on processing images.)

The shot of the Maryland Capital is from the 2004 trip. The last shot here – an Observation Blind from the Blackwater Wildlife Refuge may be the only good shot from the eastern shore trip.

Last Friday was a beautiful warm late summer day – a fine late season chance for some insect photography. So, I headed out to the Allegan Forest, it having been a few weeks since I last visited the woods. Aside from insect photography, I packed a couple of rolls of Kodak High Speed infrared 35mm film, with plans to take some landscape shots in the clear late summer sunshine.

Over the last few years, I’ve visited the Allegan forest a lot – probably 30 to 50 times a year. When I go I usually plan on spending several hours – sometimes shooting insects, botanicals, landscapes, and a few stabs at bird photography. But I usually avoid it in the early fall, when the hunters come out in force. Aside from a few turkey hunters in the spring, the summer months are pretty quiet, and its not uncommon to spend a whole day in the woods without encountering anyone (except for the occasional car running down the dirt roads.

So its a bit of a surprise when the woods are suddenly full with guys in pickup trucks, wearing red hats. And while the sound of gunfire is a pretty common backdrop – it really ratchets up a few notches once a hunting season starts.

And this time of year it’s squirrel season. You actually see a lot few squirrels in the woods than in city parks or other more tame settings – but then I guess it would be unseemly to blast away at the rodents in the middle of an urban park.

So anyhow – one of the last insect forays of the year. Overall, it was not terribly productive. The recent heavy rains has kept the vegetation green. A few trees are starting to turn, and the golden rod in out in full force.

I saw a few red meadowhawk dragonflies when I first arrived – but they were elusive and I got no shots. On the other hand, American Coppers and Eastern Tailed blues were out in force. These diminutive butterflies can a challenge to photograph, but their sheer numbers gave so many opportunities that a good shot or two was inevitable.

I started out north of the river, and then worked my way south, past the dam near swan creek and ultimately winding up in the field off 46th street. We’ve had a lot of heavy rain in the last week or so, and the bog at the end of the field was finally getting re-hydrated. I walked out on the matted and now dry vegetation, but now my feet sand into cool water, and when I knelt down to take photos my knees sank into the grass and directly into water. The small pond that never quite dried up again had standing water in it, and the small ditch leading back to the pond also had standing water in it. The red meadowhawks and white faced meadowhawks were out in force, but kept retreating back into the mucky areas where the grass was not thick enough to support my weight. So no great shots of these creatures.

A pair of fritillary butterflies provided another interesting subject. They would separate and forage for a while, and then fly back towards each other and fly around, hovering, holding their positions relative to each other..

In addition to the butterflies, several moths were out in the daylight, foraging on the few flowers that were still out and in bloom. I did not get an idea on them, but several different species were out in force.

More photos:

 Whitefaced Meadowhawk:

A few weeks ago, while in the local camera shop, I indulged myself and picked up a couple of rolls of Kodak HIE – High Speed Infrared film. This is a wonderful film that is truly unique. I shot both rolls last Friday – preliminary results are not that promising – but working with for the first time in several months made me think a little about some of the characteristics that set this film apart.

Of course – there’s the obvious. It’s an infrared film. Not just a near infrared film, like most of the others that competed for this niche – it’s a true infrared film with sensitivity all the way out to 900 nm. This is one of the few films that can be used with a true infrared filter – like a Hoya RM 90 – to produce images purely from invisible light. (That is – light outside of the visible spectrum.)

But the other interesting feature of this film is the lack of an anti-halation layer. The anti-halation layer in film prevents light from passing through the film and then reflecting back into it from the rear. It also prevents the film from ‘light piping’ – that is, acting like an optical fiber cable and transmitting light along the film.

The lack of the anti-halation layer introduced the nice gauzy highlights seen in the film. It also is partially responsible for the handling issues associated with this film.

Here are just a few random and rambling thoughts on Kodak HIE:

• Handling issues: Kodak advises that this film be handled in total darkness. They always put the words total darkness in italics, so you know they mean it. The truth is that this film really does have to be handled in – you guessed it – total darkness.

Some time ago I took a photography class, and it was asserted there that the total darkness requirement was due to the ability of infrared light to penetrated the felt light seal on a 35mm canister. This may well be the case – but I suspect the handling issues really arise out of the lack of the anti-halation layer.

Due to the lack of the anti-halation layer, HIE will “pipe light” – and any light that hits the leader of the film gets pumped back into the film canister, ruining many frames is not the entire roll.

This film is very sensitive to exposure – I’ve tried loading film in a makeshift changing bag consisting of a black T-shirt under a mid weight jacket in the back shaded back area of my car – and have still lost several frames at the start of the roll due to exposure. Try loading a roll in direct sunlight, and it may well be completely ruined.

The light piping effect is not limited to loading the film. I once accidentally flipped the camera to Bulb setting, and managed to get the cable release stuck while taking the photo. The result was a many seconds long exposure that not only blackened the frame I was shooting, but more or less ruined the entire roll as the light ran along the film into both the exposed and unexposed portions of the film.

On the flip side – I’ve never had any problem with fogging when unloading 35mm canisters. Yes – I usually do unload under a jacket or some other sort of makeshift changing bag, but my experience has been that the sensitivity is just not as great. Again – this is probably because the handling issues arise out of the ‘light piping’ effect, and not so much because the IR light is penetrating the film canister.

• Exposure: Exposing infrared is always tricky. The camera meter is sensitive to visible light, not IR. If you are using a filler – like a #25 red filter – you may find that your camera’s meter is more or less sensitive to red light than other colors. In addition, IR light is highly directional – I’ve learned from shooting digital IR that just a 90 degree rotation of the camera can have a big impact on how much IR light hits the sensor. Since you can’t see the IR light – it’s had to predict how this effect will play out.

Personally, I’ve opted for using one camera (a Pentax ME Super) for all my IR work. Through trial and error I’ve been able to get a handle on exposure issues with Kodak HIE. With this camera, and with a #25 red filter, I set the ISO to 100 and am usually in the ball park in terms of exposure.

I also follow Kodak’s advice and bracket widely – 2 stops in both directions. Nine times out of then, the frame shot at ISO 100 is the right one.

• Filters: Without a filter, HIE is more or less like any other B&W film, except for finicky handling issues and lots and lots of grain. I usually use a #25 red filter with this film. A few years ago I experimented with using a Hoya RM 90 with this film, but in comparison shots I could not see a significant difference in the images taken with the #25 red filter, and the RM 90. So I’ve stuck with the red filter – its a lot easier to be able to see through the finder, and the exposure times are a lot shorter.

• Developers: I’ve developed HIE in Rodinal, HC110, D76 (1+1), and D19, all with good results. My current favorite is Rodinal, 1:50, for 15 minutes. (This is 3 minutes longer than the normal recommendation of 12 minutes, but I also agitate only once per minute.) D19 can produce wonderfully crisp high contrast images with HIE – but it’s not a developer that I usually have on hand.

This film is extremely grainy – IMO, a developer like Rodinal that brings out the grain with brilliant clarity adds to the effect.

; Storage and Expiration: Unlike many B&W films that can be used years beyond their expiration date with only minor degradation if stored in a freezer or refrigerator, HIE really does lose its sensitivity to infrared light once it goes stale. That said, I’ve used it a few months beyond expiration with no problems. But, a couple of years ago when I inherited several rolls of B&W film that were several years out of date (but stored in a refrigerator) the HIE was the only one that was unusable. The Tri-X, Plus-X, and even Panatomic-X were all fine.

Those are the only hints and tips I can offer about Kodak High Speed Infrared. Unanswered questions remain – like why is it called Kodak HIE and not HSI? And the big question – how long will it remain available?

Sadly, in the last few years many other fine IR films have bit the dust – Konica IR 750 and Ilford SFX to name two. We can only hope that HIE will survive for a while.

Last weekend my wife and I stopped by the Mount Carmel Cemetery in Big Rapids, Michigan. We were on our way back from a family wedding in Traverse City and made the side trip to the town she grew up in.

While I took a digital camera and zoom lens along on the trip, a part of me yearned for the simplicity of a basic film SLR with a standard 50mm lens. So I also took along the Pentax LX and SMC-A 50mm f1.4 lens. No zoom, no auto focus, no program modes (except aperture priority.) I also brought a few rolls of Neopan 400 B&W film.

After the recent experience with the Pz-1p – where the camera was pulled out of moth balls only to find it had developed a sticky shutter from disuse – it seemed like a good idea to give an occasional workout to the cameras I like and want to keep using. So – the venerable LX was pulled out of mothballs, and I was happy to enjoy the exceptionally big and bright view finder (what happened to view finders in modern cameras?)

So – on to Mount Carmel. This is the Catholic Cemetery in Big Rapids, and many of my wife’s Irish ancestors are buried under a huge Maple tree near the front of the cemetery. It’s really a treat to see a tree this size. The many branches that spiral out of the main trunk are held together with a cable that wraps around the tree.

The light was flat that day – it was cool with a dreary overcast sky. I pushed the Neopan 400 to ISO 800, processing it in Microdol-X diluted 1:3. The push gives the film a higher contrast than usual, but the images still look flat to me.

I opted to give the exposures that ‘old fashioned’ look with some simple PhotoShop adjustments followed by conversion to the purple based tritone I’ve been using for most of my B&W scans. It’s interesting – not great, but it gives the photo a little more character than it would of had without the affectation.

Behind the cemetery was a scrubby woods. Being that far north there are lots of birches growing wild in the woods, and more on a whim than anything else I snapped a few shots of the birches and other trees. Applying a few Photoshop manipulations made this image pop. It’s not conventional and doesn’t do well at internet size – but the myriad highlights off the scrubby leaves, and the broken birch trunks have something compelling about them.

As I’ve noted before – Midwestern landscape photography is more about finding that little niche of space and time where things come together and create some sort of atmosphere. I’m not sure is Scrubby Birches really gets there or not – it will take a big print to really determine the potential (something I haven’t done yet). But it speaks to me.

It's  funny that when I started out in photography, my goal was to take photos like the ones I’d see in magazines or advertisements. And maybe I managed to get a few of those. But increasingly, if a photo I take looks like something I’ve seen elsewhere, I find it uninteresting and don’t feel that it’s a success.

Mostly Meadowhawks....

I spend a lot of time taking photos of insects, and as a result I feel a degree of simpatico with them. Whether shooting butterflies or robberflies, Insects offer a fascinating view of the natural world.

Yeah – well, with some limits. A week ago I discovered termite mud tunnels on a wooden partition wall in my basement. Fascination with the marvelous efficiency and organization of insects comes to a screeching halt once you see them literally eating you out of house and home!

So today the termite exterminator came, drilled holes in the floor of the house, and pumped some sort of chemical under the foundation. He says its safe – I have to believe that it’s safer than the chlordane that was used to treat the house 30 years ago.

Well, with pesticide fresh in the ground I can rest a little easier. But unfortunately the extermination visit took several hours in the morning, and my one chance to visit the Allegan Forest this week evaporated. So, in mid afternoon I headed back out to the McLinden Nature Trails, hoping it would again be productive.

The many acres of rolling hills are now covered with brown grass. A few large darners hovered over the grassy fields, and one or two saddlebag dragonflies were in the air. But overall, the red Meadowhawks were the most prevalent – with the bright red males and brownish females darting through the grassy fields.

While they are not particularly rare, it was a pleasure to chase and photograph these late season dragonflies. It was a breezy day – for a short while it was quite gusty – and that kept the dragons flying frequently and low.

This weekend will be busy with other stuff, and with a couple new exhibits coming up I’m not sure when I’ll next get the chance to chase dragons – but hopefully a few more sessions are still in store this season.

More photos:

Eastern Tailed Blue:

Meadowhawk Dragonflies:

Last weekend I finished developing the film from my recent Chicago trip. I posted on this trip a few days ago, at which time I had developed 4 of the eight rolls of film shot during this two day exercise in urban street photography.

As luck would have it, those first four rolls were clearly the strongest of the shoot. The four remaining rolls were more or less just shots of details from the hotel room, a bunch of way mis-exposed images (not sure what I was doing with those) and a handful of images from the actual street.

Is it a sad state of affairs when a photo of a doorknob is the best you have to offer? If you define the value of a photo based on the content of the subject matter, what good is a picture of a doorknob (no offence to the folks who put together home improvement catalogs.) But judging a photo by the content of its subject is the most superficial of all assessments (and the most widely applied, sadly.) So – here’s a doorknob. Nice hotel room. I was sitting on the commode when I took the shot. It’s the only shot in this lot that I took the time to tone.

And then there was the closet in the hotel room. It was a great full sized closet, and like the rest of the room it had a ceiling way up high – 10 or 11 feet minimum. And there was shelf over my head (and I’m just over 6 feet tall.)

Most intriguing was the light. When I opened the door it was on. And every time I opened the door again it was on. At first I thought that the light was continuously on, and figured that at night the ghostly outline of the doorframe would haunt the room.

Well, I got more Jethro Bodine than Albert Einstein in me – as it turned out the light was hooked up to a button in the doorframe, and like your home refrigerator turned off when the door was closed. But still, that top shelf made a nice place to line up exposed canisters of film, and so at the end of the first full day there I snapped a shot of the four rolls of film exposed thus far.

I had to hold the camera over my head, and obviously could not see what I was shooting except in the mind’s eye.

I think some of those shots could have been the strongest of the series – but an unhappy accident during development ruined things.  

I always develop one roll per tank, and I use the ‘double’ sized tanks (that can hand two rolls of 35mm film.), I also always use 600 ml of developer solution. Since a 36 exposure roll of 35mm film has the same surface area as a roll of 120 film (more or less) I reckon this leads to more consistent of results.

Unfortunately, I lost one of the little clips that holds the film spool in place. I used to just put an empty spool in the tank to make sure the spool with film on it didn’t slide out of the developer solution, but I got lazy and stopped doing that, and developed dozens of rolls with the spool unrestrained with no problems.

Until now... This particular roll of film slid on the center tube that runs down the middle of the plastic developer tank, and wound up at the top of tank – right where the developer and air space interface. The result was hard agitation marks in the center part of the roll.

I try to imagine how the developer could make those sprocket marks on the film – and I can ‘t figure it out. After all, the sprockets of the film roll are up in the plastic spool – so how does a perfect image of them get projected onto a few frames, just from the sloshing of Microdol-X in the tank?

Beats me – but then the effect is so bad, it’s almost good (but not quite)....

Yesterday was Labor Day – the unofficial end of summer. Unlike Friday, which was cloudy and cool, yesterday turned out to be a beautiful summer day – an ideal day for shooting insects.

I was tempted to head out to the Allegan forest yet again, but I’ve been poking around in the Urban Dragon Hunters blog (urbanodes.blogspot.com ) which is devoted to tracking down dragonflies in non-pristine, urban areas.

OK – so the Allegan forest is far from pristine, but it is pretty remote and definitely not urban. But it also has not been terribly productive of late – so on this Labor Day I decided to visit the McLinden Nature Trails. Located just east of Kalamazoo, this ~300 acre park has proven to be one of the most productive areas for insect photography this year.

The Urban Dragon Hunters are pretty concerned with identifying the insects (primarily odonota) they find, and they seem to do a good job of it. After looking at their ID’s I decided to just stick with “Meadowhawk” for most of the dragonflies I shot on this outing. Heck – maybe I’ll just change over to calling everything “Insect” (it certain would save on the time it takes to set up the static web pages.)

Ah well – one of the first finds of the visit was a huge mantis who was lolling around on the grassy trail near the parking lot. This has been a good year for mantids – at least I’ve been bumping into them regularly. In Chicago I saw a downright enormous mantis buzzing between the cars on a very congested Michigan Avenue, and this evening (Tuesday, September 05) I cam home to find a good sized mantis clinking to the wall of my house. During the day yesterday several large mantises were lumbering through the grassy fields at the park. 

Anyhow – after snapping a few shots of the mantis on the path, I shooed it out of the way (it was likely to be eaten by a dog there) and kept looking for dragonflies.

There are a fair number of Meadowhawks flying around in the warm sunshine. A few perched on the dry grass blades or withered knapweed flowers. These are the red Meadowhawks of late summer – the red dragons that appear at the end of the Work. And its always a bittersweet thing to see the Ruby Meadowhawks and Whitefaced Meadowhawks. The females and immature are brownish gold in color – blending in with the dry late summer grasses more so than the pennants of spring, who stand out on the fresh green grasses.

The dry grass posed some new challenges in terms of getting good shots. Some grass stalks were pale to the point of being white, and created startling and distracting highlights in the backgrounds. While fresh green grass easily melts into a pleasing bokeh, the highlights made by the dead gray blades posed more of a challenge.

In addition, I used an alternative flash bracket that raised the flash an inch or so higher than the bracket I usually use. This is a more elegant looking design than the one I usually use, but ultimately threw too much light behind the subject and not enough onto it, making the background problems worse. Well, I deliberately designed the bracket to do that, so in one respect I was happy to see it worked.

Overall, it was a fun and productive afternoon. I wound up chasing a checkered skipper on the mowed grass trail, and never go a good shot. I noticed an entry on the Urban Dragon Hunters blog describing a meadowhawk sighting as late as November 7 last year – so maybe there’s more good weeks left!

More photos:

Cescentspot Butterfly:

Back again to the Oak Savanna...

One of the first things I did once returning to Kalamazoo was to head out to the Allegan forest to see what opportunities were available for insect photography. Though its just the first few days of September, the cool weather has really rolled in, and Friday was cool (around the mid 60’s) and cloudy.

It obviously rained as much here as it did in Chicago, and the woods, fields, and Oak Savannas were uncharacteristically lush and green. Unusually by this time of the season they are dry and barren.

Maybe it was the cool weather, maybe the clouds, maybe I just picked the wrong set up fields to explore. Anyway you slice it, there were slim pickings for any kind of insect photography. While I Chicago I saw monarch butterflies everywhere. (There were dozens if not hundreds in the Cancer Survivor garden alone.) But here I saw a few lonely Coppers and Blues, but no Swallowtails, Monarchs, or other larger butterflies.

 There were a lot of deer around – its funny, but I don’t see as many deer in the Allegan woods are I’d expect. Maybe they keep a low profile with all the hunting going on. The deer I saw on this day were all young ones – still with their spots, some still in groups, probably wrapping up the end of their first summer. I only brought back three insect shots, two of the same subject. The Black Saddle Bag was the only interesting subject I found, and it wasn’t much for posing. It reminds me of the Widow Skimmers that were so prevalent in the spring and early summer.

Ah well – those are the glory days. September is a frenetic month coming up, with several trips and shows to prep for, and I’m not sure what opportunities for shooting dragonflies and other insects will come along. By the fall equinox, the insect populations really start to plunge, though a few hearty survivors can yet be found on warm autumn afternoons.

Finding a good starting point for developing B&W film in common developers is usually not a problem. So I was surprised when, after multiple internet searches, I could not find a development time for Fuji Neopan 400 in Microdol-X 1:3 dilution. I found lots of references to this film and the undiluted, stock solution of Microdol, but nothing about the dilute solution.

I’ve developed several rolls of Neopan 400 in Microdol-X 1:3 over the last few days, and feel comfortable making a recommendation for development times, specifically:

15.5 minutes at 22 C. (Note that this is 2 C warmer than most developer recommendations). Microdol-X diluted 1:3. Continuous agitation for the first 30 seconds, then vigorous agitation 10 seconds per minute thereafter. Continuous but very gentle agitation for the last 30 seconds. I always pre-soak film for 2 minutes before developing. Stop, fix, rinse as usual of course. This film does have some dye based sensitizers in it, so a round of hypo clearing agent is a good idea to remove the pink tint.

For scanning the film this has worked out well. Objectively, the negs are a bit thin and possibly could do with another minute of development, but for scanning they work out well. Shadow detail is good, and even with that last bit of agitation, highlights are not blocked up. An alternative would be to adopt the Kodak style of agitation, and agitate every 30 seconds.

I’m a bit worried since Neopan no longer appears on the fujifilm.com product list. Maybe I’m missing it, maybe another film bites the dust.

I avoided this film for a while because I interpreted the name – Neopan – to suggest that it was a new fangled tabular grain film. (Neo = new Pan = panchromatic film). It really is a very fine traditional film. Nothing against tabular grained films, btw, I just prefer the look, feel, and usage of traditional films.

Update: August 2, 2008: I haven't had a chance to do much with the Neopan and Microdol-X combination since posting this. The biggest problem has been the low volume of film that I shoot. The few batches of Microdol that I have mixed up in the last couple of years, have generally wound up going down the drain when they expired.

I have a project coming up and plan on shooting a lot Neopan 400. I decided to re-check the development time in this post. A few days ago I developed a fresh roll of 35mm Neopan 400 in Microdol X, 1:3, at 22C for 15.5 minutes. It worked great - so I'm happy to affirm the recommendation in the post from 2006.

Earlier this week I headed into Chicago, for a little bit of urban R&R. For this trip we decided to stay at the Congress Hotel, a venerable old institution just south of the Art Institute and near Grant Park.

I always look to trips to the city as a means of revitalizing my photography. The stimulation is twofold – first there’s the opportunity for some urban street photography, a real change of pace from the nature and landscape work I usually do. And then there’s the exposure to galleries and museums – a chance to see different approaches not only to photography but also to other visual arts as well.

For this trip, I added a third element and brought along Eddie Ephraums’s book, Darkroom to Digital. I’ve been picking at this an his Creative Elements book for some time, and decided it was time to sit down and actually read it. 

It’s been almost a year since my last visit to the city. This trip was much shorter, and much less focused on just photography. Of the flip side, with the exception of the scorpion sting on my right foot, I was not hobbled and felt comfortable walking for hours on end.

So how did the three influences come together?

The verdict is still out on the actual photos I shot during the trip. For me, urban street photography is still solidly in the realm of film – fast traditional silver film, like Tri-X or NeoPan 400. For this trip I shot out the last of my store of Tri-X (the ‘new’ emulsion) and started working on my sizeable horde of NeoPan 400.

Before I left home, I mixed up a gallon of Microdol-X. I really like the look of grainy, 35mm film, developed in Microdol-X 1:3. Although the Microdol is a fine grain developer, at the 1:3 dilution the grain reduction is not as pronounced. What you do get is an even, consistent, and to my eye pleasing graininess that become more pronounced as the miniature 35mm negatives are enlarged.

Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate for much street shooting, as we moved in and out of one rain storm to another, sometimes just misting, sometimes pouring down. 

Ephraums’s book made for a very interesting read. Its refreshing to read a book that discusses the whys of photography, and not just the processes and outputs. Unlike his Creative Elements, the photos in this book moved away from landscapes and towards found object still lifes – which inspired more than a few shots around the hotel room, which had enough historic ambiance to provide some interesting subjects.

While Ephraums’s book was not a technical guide to monochrome digital processing, it did get into some of the techniques that he uses. I’ve been using duotones and tritones to tone my monochrome prints for a few years now, and it was interesting to read about his techniques in this light.

I also found his used of extreme crops in film frames to achieve a certain effect. The photo of the abandoned light station – visible from the carnival setting of Navy Pier – is really inspired by some of his images and techniques.

 In regards to inspiration from exhibits and museums, the Art Institute of Chicago had a large scale retrospective on Harry Callahan. Up till now, my exposure to his work was limited to a 1967 Hallmark Calendar of his photos, which I found among my father’s books. The calendar alone was a notable influence when I first looked through it. The photograph of leaves on the ground, simply entitled Chicago, 1950, (it accompanied the month of October in the calendar) was particularly notable, and as I looked it a few years ago my notions about simplicity of composition and a strong center of interest popped like soap bubbles.

One of the most instructive aspects of the exhibit was the inclusion of a couple of negatives on display, along with the final prints. I was amazed at how Callahan achieved his results through high contrast printing. Until now, I’ve been focused on preserving shadow detail, and that has driven my techniques for developing, scanning, and printing. That can result in a wonderful, luminous print. But it can also result in flat images that lack snap. So, in the post-exposure, post-scanning processing for the images from this current trip, I’ve put more attention on punching up the contrast, and to some extent printing down, perhaps sacrificing some luminousity in favor of more punch and snap.

Here are a few more outtakes from this trip: