Mark Cassino Photography - Mark's Blog

Yesterday I posted a handful of new toy camera shots. These shots were taken either with a Holga camera, or with another 35mm Special Moments dollar store camera.

I’m back to working a (more or less) full time day job, and so I have to resort to grabbing photos whenever possible. Toy cameras are perfect for these – keep one under the seat of your car and pull it out whenever a scene or moment speaks to you.

I have tried a few new things here...

For one thing, the sunflower was an initial experiment in Holga close-ups. To take it I put a series of close up diopters over the Holga’s lens, using a ombined +4, +2, and +1 set. These are pretty inexpensive close-up filters, and so they probably distort the shot a bit. But hey, its a Holga.

The hardest thing to master with Holga close up techniques is compensating for the different perspective of the finder, which is to the side of the lens, and the lens itself. I’ve taken to lining up the shot through the finder, then moving the camera so that the center of the camera back is directly in front of my eye. Of course, I can’t see through the camera and can’t see what I’m shooting, but if in theory if done correctly I’m putting the camera lens where the finder lens was, and should get a shot that is something like what I saw in the finder...

In theory.... The great thing about working with the Holga is that you really never know what you are going to get. And, even with the close up filters and shooting just a few inches from the subject, the wide angle lens on the Holga seems to make it almost impossible to get a clean background, free from distractions.

But then – I’ve only tried it a few times, so I’ll keep practicing (if only for the fun of it.)

The Laundry in Galesburg is another Holga shot. Since I have a fairly long commute I’ve taken to shooting while driving. (I’m working on setting up and in-car photoshop installation so I can edit files while driving, but that may prove to be impractical.) I made a beer run on the way home from work, and the slight jog to the market turned into taking the back roads home. Galesburg is a small town, I’ve driven through it many times when driving back and forth to the Fort Custer Recreation Area, a favorite nature site a few years ago. Sitting at the stop light the late afternoon sun was sneaking in the back door of the empty laundry.

This was at the height of the heat wave here in Michigan, which probably explained why the laundry was empty and the back door was propped open. But the light and the reflections were engaging, and I had just enough time to grab the Holga, hold it blindly to the passanger side window, and shoot. I never even looked through the finder, but the shot seems to have framed itself up well enough. I like the overall akimbo composition, and especially the glimmer of the Stars and Strips in the window pane above the door, just below the peeling paint.

 The last of the three new shots posted was taken with another Dollar Store Special Moments 35mm film camera. I figured that now that I have a job, I can splurge and buy more photographic gear. And so I wound up buying 5 Special Moments cameras – three more of the standard wide angles, and two of the silver ‘sports’ models.

I was curious to see if they were all the same optically, or if they each had their own feel and flavor. In the worst case, I could always dissect one or two, just to see what was inside, and maybe mount the plastic lenses on one of the old TLR’s I have on hand with fogged or missing lenses.

It seems that each camera is indeed pretty unique. I pulled out the all black one because it looks more serious than the pink one I’ve been using. It gets this remarkable iris-like flare effect when the sun hits the lens, the film tends to warp in the chamber (giving the images a bent look to them) and the winding mechanism overlaps frames to the point of near double exposures.

Wow – what a great camera.

I took a few pictures of trees reflected in the river, and really like the effect. Maybe in the fall I’ll try some color film in it.

The Holga shots were taken on Cassic Pan 200 and 400. I developed both variants in HC-110 Dilution B for 9 minutes, 68 degrees, normal agitation. This produced a beefy enough negetive with both varients of the film (the Holga almost always requires a good push in the developing stages) and also brought out some pretty pronounced grain (which I like.) The 35mm shot was taken on Tri-X, developed in HC110 Dil H.

The digital scans are toned with the indigo tritone I originally cooked up for the Chicago street photography entry, and which has become (for the time) a favorite tone for mono shots.

Summer is in full swing here in west Michigan. The days are not as long as they used to be, but they sometimes make up for their shortened duration with intensified heat. Tis is the time of year where the lush green of early summer takes on a brown tint. This is the time of year when a few leaves from the more stressed tress start to rattle about on the sidewalks and dirt roads, foreshadowing the great rustle of fallen leaves to come in the fall. This is the time of year when the flower wilts, though the foliage remains fulsh and full. It’s high summer – the dog star is barking. The birds still sing, but with a mean edge to their song, and not with the rejoicing of spring.

And this is the time of year when, for a true northerner, the prospect of a cold night by the fire, a dinner cooked long in a hot stove and not a backyard grilled, and night’s sleep deep under layers of blankets all beckon. Some folks may never understand why anyone would willing forsake the warmth and lush growth of the summer months, and eagerly embrace the stark realities of winter. But I think of winter of winter as a sort of temporal desert. For a period time, for a season, the earth grows harsh and hard. Those who live with the four seasons are like pilgrims who, whether they like it or not, make an annual journey into the clarifying and cleansing desert. And the don’t even have to leave home...

Hey – it’s August 7, why am I writing about winter?

Ok – let’s talk about recent insect photos...

I’m behind on my blogging. Last Friday I went out to the Allegan forest, my weekly trip to see what was happening. It was the first cool day after a week long, brutal heat wave. The heat had broken with strong storms and lots of rain, and so the sandy soil in Allegan was still damp, the plants in the barrens and savannas were still green.

As a day of photography it was pretty unremarkable and unproductive. I got a few shots of of an Eastern Tailed Blue, and a single dragonfly shot.

I started the visit with a trip to the barrens off 46th street, which in the spring is a riot of coreopsis. There always seems to be a second, lessor wave of coreopsis in late summer, and a few of the yellow flowers punctuated the green brown of the fields.

Although the heat wave had broken, it was still quite warm out in the midday sun. The edge of this field has a large area of cottonwood saplings – home to many nesting indigo buntings and other birds. The saplings are pretty uniform at about 12 feet high. Their leaves make a rubbery, slapping sound when a good breeze rustles through them.

This is the time of year when cicada come out in force, and in this particular field there are always abundant cicada, not high up in the trees but down low, hanging off the branches of the smaller saplings or lumbering up out of the grasses and weeds. Usually I see them as they fly away – they often rattle against the leaves of whatever plant they are leaving, and then buzz away, making a deep, loud, buzzzzzzz as they lumber off. I saw several on the branches of some of the small oaks and boarding cottonwoods, but they invariably flew off as I approached – so, no photos.

On Saturday I taught a summer photography workshop at the Pierce Creek Center. I had planned to go out shooting with the group afterwards, but things ran a little late (in case you haven’t noticed I can be long winded) and I spent the time after the class talking with some of the folks who had attended.

Packing up after the workshop, I saw dozens of cicada killers working a strip of weedy prairie between the parking lot and the road in. This little berm of earth was no more than 10 or 15 feet wide, but was home to dozens of the cicada killers who had evacuated large warrens in the sandy soil. One female flew by with a paralyzed cicada in tow – looking as large as a hummingbird or chickadee.

Over the rest of the weekend, here at home, I broke out the insect setup and shot some of the thread waisted wasps and hornets that congregate on the flowing spearmint that grows along the fence line in my little urban yard. I’m not a big fan of the mint – it’s aggressive and relentless as it spreads. But my house is just a mile or two of the AM Todd factory, and this area was no doubt host to many mint farms in the past. While these plants may just be wild vagrants, they may also be a bit of testimony to the history of the local area.

 In any event, two large clusters of gray coneflower are now sprawling in the mint patch – and I’ll put my money on the hearty prairie plants to succeed.

A few more images:

Eastern Pondhawk:

Good new arrived Saturday with notification that two of my photos have been accepted into the Maryland Federation of Art Sixth Annual American Landscapes exhibit, which will be running at the MFA Circle Gallery, in Annapolis from September 8 through October 14, 2006. I had a piece in the fourth exhibit (did not get in last year) and had a great time visiting Annapolis.

I consider my landscape work to be the most serious stuff I shoot. I don’t shoot that much of it, and prsent even less mostly because the opportunity isn’t there and it's hard to do. It’s not that I’m not out working, or that I forget my cameras or something – it’s rare that the land speaks to me coherently, showing me the shot to be taken. It get incoherent messages all the time, and unlike the “Outer Limits” the problem is definitely with the receiver….

Doing landscapes in the Midwest is not an easy task – you don’t have grand panoramic scenes, fabulous mountains, or other natural wonders that are slam dunks for landscape shooters. During my recent trip to North Carolina I felt like Gomer Pile, saying “Golly – look at those mountains.” Mountains, valleys, canyons, gorges, heck – even lighthouses – all offer some degree of pizzazz to an image. The subject is possibly the most basic aspect of any photo, and Mount Rushmore will usually have more impact than, say, Michigan’s Bald Mountain, no matter what.

Let’s face it – shooting landscapes in the Midwest means a lot of flat plains, loads of trees, and a sun that sometimes shines, but often hides behind a thick layer of clouds.

If a task is worth doing, it’s worth doing because it is difficult. Granted, “difficult” is a relative measure. In the Midwest you generally don’t need to engage in heroics to reach a spot, and you are generally not threatened by the elements as you try to shoot (nautical photography being a notable exception.)

But then, all around the world rare and inaccessible places are becoming less rare and more accessible every day. A couple generations ago the Everglades were a true wilderness, now they are a tourist attraction. Denali was once a remote frontier, now it is an air fare and hotel ticket away. I’d suspect that here in the modern world it’s all pretty easy to get to where you want to go whenever you want to get there. Which is no doubt why some of the prime photographic locations in the great national parks out west have photographers lined up dozens deep, all shooting the same old shot.

That’s why the Midwestern landscape beckons to me. They are seldom high impact, rarely superficial, and really break your back as a photographer. You have to find the place with a bit of something, take a lot of shots, go back to the same place over and over and over to work the nuance – and what you get is something that most people will look at and say “huh…”

Well, Nietzsche once wrote:

“Slack and sleeping senses must be addressed with thunder and heavenly fireworks. But the voice of beauty speaks gently; it creeps only into the most awakened souls. Gently trembled and laughed my shield today; that is the holy laughter and tremor of beauty.” (Walter Kaufmann Translation, Penguin Books.)

Well, Nietzsche tended to get overly dramatic, but his point is well taken. To see the beauty in a brownfield - or a little spit of midwestern woods or prairie - is an attribute of the awakened consciousness.

And so I’m proud and honored to have Weedy Sassafras and Use and Lose represented in the Maryland show. I have been a stranger to the old farmstead in the latter shot, but frequently visit the bit of oak savanna where Weedy Sassafras was shot, and it’s one of the few areas of the maze like woods where I don’t need the GPS, because I recognize each tree individually.

Yesterday I decided to visit the Pierce Cedar Creek Institute for Environmental Education to check out the opportunities for some general insect photography. Despite its high sounding name, the Pierce Creek Institute is basically a nature preserve, with hundreds of acres of forest, restored prairie areas, and wetlands. An extensive trail system covers the grounds, and in an afternoon (if you hike quickly) you can cover all sorts of terrain and microenvironments.

I’ll be conducting a photography workshop at Pierce Creek next Saturday, focusing on summer photographic subjects. This is a follow up on the winter photography workshop we held last January – and hopefully the weather and subject matter will be more inviting.

Once again, the weather did not cooperate. The day was predicted to be sunny and hot, but was overcast, muggy, and hazy in the morning. I drove out to Pierce Creek (about 45 minutes from Kalamazoo) in hopes that things would clear by the time I arrived – but it took over an hour until, at around noon, the sun finally started to break through and temperatures soared.

 The restored prairie areas were thick with dragonflies and other insects. As usual, the challenge was to get a good shot with a clean background – and also as usually the perching pennant dragons were the easiest to work with.

The forested areas were, as expected, must less productive. There were a few clearings where I crawled around after meadowhawks (later to realize I was crawling in poison-ivy), but in general the prairie areas were by far the most productive.

Aside from the dragonflies the most interesting observations of they day included an American Painted Lady, Giant Swallowtail, and Cicada Killer – who was foraging on a Queen Ann’s Lace Flower and wasn’t out killing cicadas at all.

More photos:

Halloween Pennant Dragonfly:

 

 

 

Giant Swallowtail:

 

Cicada Hunter:

One bright morning
when my work is over
man will fly away home
-Rastaman Chant

Be Thou Light issuing forth out of Darkness,
I am Darkness issuing forth out of Light,
Yea, Issuing Forth from Thee...
-Ahab, addressing the Whale.

These days it seems like I’m spending a lot of time waiting for the next interesting photo to come along. I don’t think its because I’m a worser photographer than before. Its more that my standards and expectations have risen. The exciting images come less frequently, simply because they are harder to attain.

An they come from unexpected quarters as well. I’m really pretty happy with “One Bright Morning” shown here. I just snapped it with a new junk camera sometime in the last few weeks, while roaring down the highway through a patch of fog.

Some folks might argue that its more of a graphic than a photograph. Granted – after scanning the film I subject the curves to some mighty manipulation in Photoshop. But I still shot this on film, spooled it onto developing rolls, dropped it into the tank, mixed up the developer, and took it through all the steps.

I don’t think the digital manipulation is any more profound than what a good darkroom expert could achieve. Man Ray could create this effect blindfolded (though being blindfolded in the darkroom is a bit redundant.) But I basically slapped the curves around to simulate a solarization effect, one that I believe would be achievable using a combination of film solarization and print solarization. But then, what do I know about the darkroom?

At any rate – the big beef real artists have about photographers is that it is a ‘mechanical art.’ Inherently representational, in photography you take what you get (er... maybe that’s ‘you get what you take.’) Well – either way, you are not creating it from scratch, its more about recording. So in a sense digital manipulation opens the doors to more creative, less mechanical and representative work.

Nonetheless, I like this shot. I added the red border around the black and white photo, just because black, white, and red are a pleasing color combination. Red is outside the photo’s frame, because the Work is incomplete.

I was thinking of the Wailers’ song when I took this shot, but after looking that the print, and the darkenss around the sun, the quote from Moby Dick came to mind, and both resonate with my feelings on the shot.

Ah – one bright morning...

A few weeks ago I headed over to Riets flea market in Lawton, Michigan. This is a big, sprawling market that covers several acres. It’s best visited on a hot summer day, when the dust kicks up in little whirl-winds and your judgment about purchases and haggling is clouded by the relentless summer sun.

I’ve been heading to Riets for over 20 years. My wife hates the place, so I usually go alone. The market has transformed over those years. Back in the 1980’s there were a lot more vendors just offering miscellaneous stuff. Many of the ‘booths’ (they are really just tables out in the sun) were sort of like mobile garage sales – odds and ends, this and that, things like Pogo bubble bath containers, ash trays, and empty collector editions liquor bottles.

These days you see much more professional displays – maybe sunglasses, T-Shirts, socks (lots of socks!), tools or CD’s.

Twenty years ago no one sold food at the flea market – expect perhaps for one or two vendors who sold huge bags an Vandalia onions. These days there are a lot of food vendors, selling the dry boxed goods you find at your local super market. There are also purveyors of nutritional supplements and other consumables.

Personally, I miss the vendors who sell miscellaneous odds and ends. Though there are sill enough of them to make the trip worthwhile, they seem to be a dying breed. And increasingly the odds and ends are rifles, knives, and swords – not the kind of rich home grown stuff you look for are a flea market.

But my recent trip to Riets was productive. I bought several boxes of weather stripping at a fraction of the price I would pay at Walmarts or some other discount chain. I also picked up an 8 mm movie camera, a Keystone Americana. It only has one lens (apparently of three) still attached to it. I bought it in hopes of using the one lens – a 9mm f 1.8 wide angle – for some macro photography projects. But, if that doesn’t work I can always just wind up the camera and listen to the clicka-clicka-clicka-clicka of its drive – a most pleasant sound indeed. 

But the real find of the day was a wonderful junk camera – a Vivitar IC 101 Panoramic 35mm camera – complete with plastic focus free lens.

As junk cameras go, the Vivitar is a real Cadillac. Unlike, say, the Special Moments Focus Free camera, the Vivitar is small, compact, and solidly built. It features a frame counter – a tremendous luxury for a camera of this class. It also has a protective lens cover, that locks the exposure button so you can’t take accidental shots (maybe not such a great feature). It also has a curved back plate – apparently an attempt to correct for some of the spherical aberrations caused by the focus free lens. I have an old Ansco Ready Flash that also has a curved back. You can only wonder what the results would be if the back were flat, but as it is the images are still plenty distorted.

The really exciting thing about this camera, though, is that it is P-A-N-O-R-A-M-I-C. Well, sort of. Following the fad of a decade or so ago, this camera crops the top and bottom off the 35mm frame, creating a panoramic aspect ratio.

Now, you might wonder why you shouldn’t shoot a regular 35mm frame, and do the cropping yourself. It could be just as panoramic, you wouldn’t loose any film area, and heck, if you wanted a non-pano shot, you’d have that option.

Beats me why these cameras exist at all (though even my old Pentax Pz-1p sports an optional ‘panoramic’ mode.) But the real advantage of the Vivitar camera is that the finder also is in pano mode, and the lens is truly a wide angle – based on comparisons with ‘real’ 35mm cameras, it looks like the Vivitar is in th 28 to 24mm focal length range (along the long axis, of course.)

I purchased the camera for $2. When I got home I loaded it with Adox Chm 400, and over the next couple of days shot away with it.

My first surprise came while loading this initial roll of film onto the developing spool. It started winding on just fine, but after a while the spooling action stopped, and as I felt around I realized that the film was sliced, lengthwise, almost right down the middle. I wound up snipping the film off, and found that the last third of the roll was indeed sliced right down the middle. The second roll (Neopan 400) didn’t have this problem, so I ass

At any rate, this is a great camera.ume it was due to my un-gentle rewinding of the first roll of film.

More photos:

 

 

 

 I’ve been waiting for the cicadas to arrive. Until this week, the trees were quiet. Earlier this week I saw a cicada sitting on my garage wall. They are unusual creatures – long and graceful wings on a stubby body with bulging eyes. I had to get to work, so I didn’t get a photo. Late that afternoon I heard the first whirling call of a cicada coming from the sickly maple in the back year – maybe the insect I saw that morning was singing up there that afternoon. Now there are more cicadas and their songs swirl through the summer afternoons, a sign that the summer has peaked, and is tipping back towards fall and ultimately winter.

I think about the 44th hexagram of the I Ching – “there is wind below heaven” – what was ripe is over ripe, what was growing has reached it’s apex, where there is life, there is decay.

This older photo – “High Summer” – is probably my best attempt at articulating these feelings. But articulated or not, it’s hard not to feel the subtle shift of the earth’s axis that takes place this time of year.

 This week, for a change of pace, I planned to head out to the Piece Cedar Creek Institute, a nature preserve near Delton, Michigan. But it rained on Thursday – a band of heavy precipitation rolling in off the lake around dawn and working its way to the south east. By 9 am Allegan was out of the rain, which was still building strength at my planned destination – so I changed plans and headed back to the familiar Allegan Forest.

 Although the rain had stopped, the earth and fields were still soaked. I stopped at some familiar places – I saw a drenched bee who looked like she needed a mini blow dryer.

One interesting subject was a Wood Nymph (alas - the butterfly, not a real nymph). The butterfly flew off when I appoached it and took refuge under a log - where it patiently allowed me to snap away at it.

 I wound up heading down to Swan Creek. There were lots of Canada Geese hanging out in the parking lot, and back along the trails. They languidly walked away as I approached, and as I followed them in I increasingly smelled a fishy odor, which grew to an outright stench as I reached the small dam. There were dozens of dead trout floating in the water – I’m not sure what would have caused the die-off, but I never saw so many dead fish here before.

Except for the flies, there are still few insects around the creek. After hiking around for a while – hoping to find some dragonflies or damselflies – I decided to call it day and headed back home. 

More Photos:

Hairstreak Butterfly:

Well, I saw a lot of trees today and they were all made of wood.

They were wooden trees and they were made entirely of wood - Laurie Anderson, Walk the Dog

I see a lot of trees. I like looking at trees. I don’t think the trees have any feeling one way or the other about this.

But I take a lot of photos of trees, especially when I’m in the forest. The forests I visit have a lot of small trees, so it’s hard to find the ones that really stand out and say “Take my picture!”

I’m refocusing on taking photos of trees, simply because I love looking at them and can’t find an easy, straight forward way to make them work in photographs. The woods I visit have lots of smaller trees, lots of trees that look a like, are all about the same size, all grew up together.

It’s a beautiful sight when the sunlight dodges between the trees, playing tag with itself. The small trees are so unpretentious – no denizens who stood while ancient civilizations fell, these are just weedy saplings that cropped up when the land was clear cut, and have managed to eek out an existence. Lots of them all a like, shoulder to shoulder, just getting by from day to day. These are trees I can relate to.

I have a lot of negatives in sleeves, mostly medium format, mostly of trees. The notebooks stack up to be a few feet high, and a few of the images have made it out to the website or even into physical prints.

But the trees here are elusive, and that’s saying something since they can’t move or otherwise change their appearance. It is the quintessential quandary of photography – how to capture a two dimensional image that speaks to the essence of what you see in the real time real world.

Well, I have another pile of negatives to go through, and the B&W shot at the top of this page is the first promising image I’ve been able to cull out so far. Just to do something different, I shot an ancient and long expired roll of 35mm Kodak EPR 64, cross processed it in C41 chemistry, and then inverted the images and color corrected them to produce cyan toned images. So along with the medium format film, a few cyan images of trees are presented. I like the look, and it might be a project worth continuing with other slide films.

Tomorrow I will be shooting more trees. I’ve taken a day job and only have one weekday a week to shoot, and so far have been adapt at picking the rainy day to go out. But rain or shine, I will see a lot of trees tomorrow.