Mark Cassino Photography - Mark's Blog

It was ten years ago today that I first put up a photo website. Not the current domain – that wouldn’t come for another five years – but rather I used the 5 megabytes of space provided by my old webhost, netlink. The old website was www.net-link.net/~cassino – it’s long gone, but some editions of it can sometimes be found on the Internet Wayback machine.

I first picked up a camera in July, 1997, so putting up a photo website three months later was probably a bit premature. But one photo from that original site still lingers in the current site – the bee shown here. This shot was taken in October, 1997, as I pulled up the bedding plants after the first frost. The shot was taken on print film with a Pentax Pz-70, Takumar-F 70-200 zoom, and close up diopter. It would no way meet current standards or sharpness and clarity, but bees have forever since been a favorite subject, and the composition is still pleasing to my eye.

A lot has changed on the internet in ten years. This site has grown, but has not changed all that much. It’s still basic HTML - the original site was hand coded in Windows Notepad. It was later prepped in MS FrontPage and currently with Namo Webeditor. But the essential design has remained the same. The image stream is a change towards less-edited, more chronological presentation of work. In large part that’s for my own convenience – I use the website to organize my stuff, and wanted to see it more from a chronological . seasonal perspective than subject oriented. The blog is new, of course, and someday Calarti will probably take over the whole site.

Since I can’t thing of much to say about this anniversary, I consulted the Oracles – in my case the I Ching and Morgan’s Tarot. (I wonder is the spirits of these oracles hang out together in oracle world. It probably is a small world and you gotta take the neighbors your get…)

For years now, I ask only one question – “Where to now?” All the other stuff is best left unsaid, to avoid confusion.

The I Ching returned the 48th Hexagram – The Well. All lines young. Interesting figure, and it’s uncommon to have no lines changing. But considering all the lines in the figure, I realized that most describe a well that does not work, and only two describe one that is really functional. So the old book is pointing out what could be, but also noting what is. I should figure out how to get a fish to swim across the screen here…

Morgan was more to the point, as I pulled up the BOO! Card. No fear – lets have some surprises…

So much for anniversaries – I’ll think of something better to say ten years from now.

Late autumn. The sun hangs in Scorpio for a few last days. The trees are bare, and each passing day is shorter and darker than the last.

Just a few days ago the trees still held their leaves, and autumn colors in the bright clear light of autumn sunshine. Here are a few final shots from the last couple of weeks of autumn – since these were taken, the trees have dropped all their leaves and the cloudy days of late autumn have taken hold.

My favorite of these shots are the two “Frosty Morning” images. These were take on one of the first cold mornings of the season. These were shot in the Allegan Forest, of course, and I wandered into a low land area where the frost was particularly thick. The morning sun was rising in the clear air, and its rays were hitting the higher branches of the nearby trees, resulting in a steady patter of water drops, as the frost high up melted.

With only a few minutes to take a few shots, I grabbed what I could and was amazed at how swiftly the frost passed. Well – a few moments were frozen in time.

These shots make the end of my 6 x 7 medium format color work for this fall – though winter scenes no doubt will call for some B&W work with this camera.

Two weeks since my last post – I’ve been down in the basement workroom much of that time, cutting out mats and mounting photos. All this in preparation for the Art Etc art fair last week – which seems to have gone pretty well based on the conversations had with visitors to my booth.

I guess I should talk about art fairs before they happen so people know about them. Someday I’ll work on the commercial side of all this…

Anyhow – in a totally non-commercial spirit, while shooting fall colors last week I stuck the Vivitar IC 101 Panoramic camera into my pocket, loaded with some rather stale Fuji NPS 35mm film. The ISO 150 NPS seemed ideal for most in the sun shooting situations (good thing since the camera has no exposure controls) and as I schlepped around with the Pentax 6x7 medium format rig, I used the Vivitar to take a few other than standard shots of the autumn foliage.

The camera did not always cooperate. It seems to be getting fussy about when to respond to shutter button – and whether to respond at all. And each roll is missing a few sprockets where there wind / drive mechanism jammed while advancing the film. But for a $2 camera it’s holding up pretty well.

Most of my favorite spots in the Allegan Forest are featured here. We have the Olf Farmstead, the Coreopsis Field, Laughing Bird Woods, and other select locations.

Not that you’ll find those names on a map. If a place doesn’t have a name, I give it one and use it. That may seem pointless, since I’m only the only person who knows the name, but then Adam was the only person who knew the names of things before Eve, and naming things is a birthright we inherit from him. So these names aren’t so much points of reference as they are, well, you know, names. 

Shooting with the Vivitar 101 IC Panoramic camera got me thinking in panoramic terms. And so while in the Coreopsis Field I shot a few frames with the Pentax 6x7, composed with the intent that they be cropped to the same aspect ratio as the Vivitar. The result is this last image - the negative is about the size of two 35mm exposures, side by side, and the detail on an large print is exquisite. I was experimenting (I.e. using for the first time) with Kodak UC 400 – 120 format, of course. Grain is not much of an issue with the 6x7 format, and the colors really snap with this film.

So ultimately Vivitar IC 1010 toy camera not only kicked out a few good shots by its own right, but go me thinking outside the box a bit to put the 6x7 to different.

Well, at least thinking in terms of a different sized box…

And in what has to be a little bit of a milestone - I hit over 1,000 film scans this year while scanning this latest bast of film. Film may be waning - but over 1,000 images scanned in the last 10 months or so tells me its still an important medium - at least to me. 

More photos:

Ah, autumn… What a wonderful season.

The sweetness of autumn lies in the great brevity of this season. For weeks after the autumnal equinox, the days roll on in summer-like splendor. Then for a few brief weeks (or days) the trees turn, and paint the world with the vibrant colors of autumn foliage. And then the sun slips into Scorpio and everything changes – the winds howl, the leaves fly, and stark trees stand like dark skeletons under low skies.

Summer and winter are something – the twin poles of life and death, splendor and scarcity, light and dark. Spring grows into something – namely summer – and the line when spring moves into summer is so fine, in can scarcely be drawn or discerned.

But autumn dissolves into something. It holds up its head till it is overwhelmed, and then sinks into something. It is like a river bank, undermined by the swift current, that seems whole one second and then suddenly collapses as the current undermines it.

Well, like I always say – it’s easy to see when things are starting, but so hard to tell when they end.

So here are some autumn foliage photos. Tonight as I write this snow spits in the sky, a wind howls in from the west, and leaves just now starting to turn rip off the trees and fly carelessly away.

These shots are from last week, and from the Allegan Forest. The area has been subject to a couple days of sustained 40 mph winds as a cold front rolls on through. I suspect that when next I return to Allegan, the trees will be bare.

No matter – my last trip to the forest resulted in 10 rolls of 120 film shot – enough to keep the scanner busy for a while. Shot on Friday – I’ll pick it up from the lab tomorrow. Firearm deer hunting season starts in a few days – plenty of reason for me to keep out of the forest for a while.

So one more autumn blast is in store – a blast of photos that is – and that should be it for while. 

Just when you think you’ve got things figured out, it all changes on you.

Here we are, close to Halloween, and I set the day aside for shooting landscapes and scenics, hoping to capture some more fall color. I explored several areas I had staked out earlier in the summer - but found that either the trees had turned and dropped their leaves, or were still as green as high summer. I don’t know if I’m ahead of schedule, or behind my time…

I hiked into some new areas in the Allegan Forest – places I had scouted out months ago, but had not yet visited in the fall. Some have seen heavy traffic from hunters – new trails of marched down grass snake their way across the fields. While out I noted a lone dragonfly in one far field, and after a disappointing session with the 6x7 medium format film camera, I trudged back to the car to pick up the digital insect rig. After all, I thought, who knows when I’ll see another good dragonfly subject.

And so I hiked back and shot a few frames of a fairly cooperative Autumn Meadowhawk. Since coming home and doing some research, I’ve learned that the Yellow Legged Meadowhawk is now termed the Autumn Meadowhawk. Well, that’s a poetic change – even if these dragons are found in most of the summer months.

After investing an hour or so in this one dragonfly – figure it may be the last I’ll see for a while – I visited other parts and places in the forest. Ultimately I wound up at the Swan Creek Dam.

To my amazement, when I opened the car door I immediately saw half a dozen dragonflies in flight. Males were sparring for territory, and mating pairs lumbered through the air. Moving down towards the creek, the numbers only increased. Dozens, if not hundreds, of Autumn Meadowhawks filled the air.

There was a frantic air to their movements. For one thing, they wanted to soak up the warm rays of the sun. This was a brilliantly clear and somewhat cool (temps around 55 F) afternoon. As I knelt down to try to get good eye level shots, I often rose up to find three or four dragonflies clinging to my black fleece vest.

The dragonflies were also incredibly busy mating. I paused on the trail along Swan Creek and watched one male, who I hoped would make a good subject. He flew up, hovered a few seconds, and then darted down into a short plant near my feet – only to rise up, coupled with a female and heading out into the marsh. Well, it looks like next year’s brood will be abundant.

Unfortunately, none of the dragonflies today were perching – so no shots of them sitting on a plant stalk, contemplating the world around them. I guess they were just too cold for that. But this afternoon at Swan Creek was probably the single greatest concentration of dragonflies I’ve seen all year.

Suddenly, it’s autumn.

I’ve been lugging around the Pentax 6x7 medium format camera, taking shots of fall color in the Allegan Forest. Here’s the first decent scan from this autumn – more to follow. (Click on the image for a larger version.)

This is a spot looking south from the edge of 115th Avenue, between 46th and 48th streets. I’ve had my eye on this spot all year – hoping to catch it in some sort of autumn color. The road rises maybe 20 feet or so above the snowmobile / horse trail, and affords a nice view into the thinned out forest to the south.

Working with the 6x7 camera required a bit of a mental adjustment, after using the K10D almost exclusively for the past several months. No built in light meter, no ability to review shots once taken, and all settings purely manual. It certainly is convenient to be able to look into the finder and see the aperture and shutter settings, without having to actually look at the placement of the controls on the top of the camera.

But I find myself enjoying cool mornings with the old camera. I was shooting 220 film – 20 exposures per roll – and it’s a busy day when three rolls of film are consumed. By contrast, I often look down at the counter of my digital cameras and am amazed to see that dozens of frames have been fired off – most just duplicates of the one before them.

This shot was taken on Kodak Porta 160 VC – a 120 roll that was part of Kodak’s promotion last year – using the 6x7, Takumar 105 f2.4, and a polarizer.

More to come…

This has been an unusual autumn in Michigan. Just last week I could stand in some of my favorite places and look out to see not a single turning leaf. It was as hot and humid and green – above all, green – as any day in July or August.

But things have changed. Now bare trees, brown trees, a few changing trees, and still a few green trees occupy the landscape.  

The tulip poplar that I planted almost two decades ago has always been bright yellow on Halloween – and then loses its leaves the week after. Last week it was green – 100% green – and so I thought it would break with tradition. But in the past few days it has turned rapidly yellow – leaves are half yellow in the morning, and all yellow by sundown. It will keep to its customary Halloween costume.

I’ve made several trips into the Allegan Forest this last week - toting the much neglected Pentax 6x7 medium format camera for autumn scenic shots. I finally shot out the last of my 220 and 120 format color print film – though I’ve already bought a new cache for next week’s shooting. I’ve just starting working with the first batch of shots, back from the lab, and hope to have some colorful fall landscapes in the next few days. 

While in the forest I kept an eye out for straggling insects, and managed a couple of interesting insect shots.

At one stop I found the remnants of a large hornets’ nest shattered on the ground. Hornets abandon their nests in late fall and overwinter alone. This nest has fallen to the ground and split open, leaving the hexagonal structures laid out in the open.

I shot some close-ups of the nest structures with the K10D, DA-F 100mm macro – tripod mounted – and some help from my wildflower reflectors. A tiny fly (I think it’s a fly) was nestled in one cell on the honeycomb, and soon became my interest for a shooting at just over 1:1 magnification with the help of an extension tube. Most of the shots didn’t come out – the wind was blowing like crazy and the fly is all fluttery and motion blurred – but the one shot above did work out, and I think makes for an interesting end of season insect composition.

Buckeye Butterflies – a rare treat during the summer months – were fairly common in most locations. I found them by the Swan Creek Dam as well as in the fields along 115th Avenue and also 48th street. These butterflies have bright, stunning, almost psychedelic eyespot patterns on their upper wings == but unfortunately were not too interested in perching and posing.

At the Trout Creek Dam the pool downriver of the dam was full of trout – trapped and doomed to die without getting upstream, I suppose. To my surprise dragonflies were buzzing around. I initially thought these were Saffron Winged Meadowhawks – but after checking things more carefully it looks like these are Yellow Legged Meadowhawks. I later found a few of these in the old farmstead off 48th street.

One dragon landed on my black vest in one of the few moments when the sun was shining warmly. I took it into my hand, and it seemed to cling closely to soak up the warmth from my skin. It clung tightly for a while and then flew off – just a short distance, after which it landed in the grass on the open trail.

This may be my last insect photography post for the year. Sooner or later the frost and true autumn weather will set in. So these may be the last insect photos for a while - or at least close to the last. 

My Holga has spent the summer, and now the fall, sitting neglected under the passenger seat of my Subaru. I don’t mean to neglect it, but demands for my attention invariably push something away.

It spent several months there with the same roll of Neopan 400 film wrapped onto its spools. Like a clock – or perhaps a bomb on a timer – the film slowly advanced as the days went by. It must have been the changes in temperature in the automobile. Every time I’d pick it up the carefully aligned frame number would be absent from the red window.

When I did use it I was rusty and out of practice. There’s not much to fumble with a Holga – no aperture or shutter settings – but invariably I’d leave the lens cap in place or focus set to minimum. These discoveries would be made long after the subject and moment had moved on – so the empty squares caused by the creeping advance of the film would be next to empty frames caused by leaving the lens cap on.

No matter. I finally pulled the Neopan out of the camera, mixed up some HC110, and coaxed the latent images out on the film. Two shots caught my fancy.

 Spent was taken in the Allegan Forest, of course. It’s not uncommon to find piles of spent ammo on the ground out there – it’s probably more uncommon to look down and not find a shell or two. But the cologne bottle? I’ve seen lots of weird things that people bring into the woods to dump or shoot at, but never a bottle of men’s cologne… This is of course a double exposure – one of those happy accidents that only the Holga can bestow.