Chinese Picture Postcards – cover

JiaShan boatman, 2008 copyright of Douglas Stockdale

While I was working my way through the first edit of my photographs for the Chinese Picture Postcardsproject, this one photograph just jumped at me as the image that could be my potential photobook cover.

The project is a series of dyptichs, one of which will be a classic China photograph that you might purchase a post card of,  in order to send home to create envy or perhaps as trigger for a fond memory. The second photograph of the pair will be the reality photograph, about the change and upheaval I experienced within China.

And for me,  this photograph incorporates both of those elements. The old Chinese village with a picturesq boatsman paddling out to his destination on the river, but on the opposite banks, a row of modern, dense housing, which has risen on top of the old village hutong.

And this is starting to look like it could be a rather large book.

Best regards, Doug

Cameraless photographs – Calotypes

     

Photographs copyright of Jerry Burchfield

I have found myself very interested in a very old photographic technique that is as old as photography itself. Because making contact prints of objects on photo-sensitive paper was the very first photographic process invented by William Henry Fox Talbot in 1841, which I wrote about here.

Revisiting Talbot’s calotype photographs was a revelation, they are stunningly beautiful. Then serendipity strikes again, as I have the opportunity to review two of Jerry Burchfield’s books, Primal Images (publ 2004) and his recent Understory(2009), based on this same photographic process (Burchfield calls his Lumen prints). Both of the images posted above are from his first book, Primal Images. Granted Burchfield did not publish every Lumen print that he has made, but the ones he selected for his book are wonderful.

For those who are not familiar with the process, it seems very beguilingly simple. You chose a specimen, such as plant, flower, foliage, or whatever, then put it on top of a sheet of light sensitive paper (that odd paper that people use in the wet darkroom with an enlarger and chemicals), then set this combination outside in the direct sunlight. Perhaps for most of the day. I guess you can peek at it, but you might run the risk of not putting everything back in the proper place, but then again, that might also be part of the creative process, eh? BTW, Burchfield’s rather colorful prints were created on Black & White enlarging paper, an odd result, but again, unpredictably delightful.

I understand that Burchfield fixes his images, but I have now heard of folks who don’t.  Regardless, the results appear fascinating.  This is part photography, part chance, part print making and you could end up with some very unique images.

The funny thing about this is that I had just decided that I was not going back into the wet darkroom and I had just given away three big boxes of multi-contrast enlarging paper, a box of 8 x 10, box of 11 x 14 and a relatively expensive box of 16 x 20. And I mean, only a day or so before I acquired Burchfield’s books. Was the timing an omen; Doug – don’t go there?

I do try to live a life of no regrets, but I sure wish that I had a couple sheets of that paper now to play with. I have a couple of flowers, trees and other plants that I would like to try this process with. So if there are some good souls out there with some old enlarging paper sitting on the sidelines while their inkjet printer is humming away, and are not interested in trying this out, I would be willing to accept you enlarging paper discard donations for some experimentation.

Best regards, Doug

Critical Mass 2009 Submission

Photographs copyright of Douglas Stockdale

I just completed my 2009 Critical Mass submission with the photographs from my project, Insomnia: Hotel Noir. A photo story that I use 36 photographs to tell and then I have to distill that down to 10 images for my submission.

The 10 photographs are here, with the book cover (above) as my lead in photograph. It should be interesting to see happens next, eh?

 

  

 

  

  

 

      

Best regards, Doug

Chinese Picture Postcards

  

 Copyright Douglas Stockdale

I am continuing to think about what I saw in China over the nine months that I was there. China is a place that is in a rapid transition to try to become “modern”, and at the time, they had a ton of money to throw at their public projects.

And I think that there are enough pretty pictures of China, so I do not feel that I would add anything to that subject. But attempting to get into the issues and effects of change is something that I am interested in.

My earlier triptychs from Re: Development are still on my mind, but I am not sure how to proceed, so I am going to take a small step back and use some of those same images with the Chinese Picture Postcard photobook project. My thinking right now is to pair up the opposing types of images, the typical pretty photograph on one side of the page spread, with a facing photograph of the current construction and change.

So I think that I have figured out what my next photobook project is. wonderful! Now to make sure that as I provide updates, I can upload the images so that they sit next to each other, which the two above are supposed to be doing, but don’t appear to be behaving on my monitor.

Best regards, Doug

Update: persistence pays off.  I thought that I had prep’d and loaded the images correctly to get the effect, so I just reloaded them again and Bingo!, got it. Somehow I goofed the first time. sigh.

My next project

Having received my production proof of Insomnia: Hotel Noir, I think that this project is now ”in the bag“. I still have some images to save into the submission format for Critical Mass, but I find myself emotionally moving on.

So that takes me to what project do I want to develop next? I think that I have three alternatives:

Chinese Picture Postcards: photographs that I made in China in 2007/2008 that on the surface, look like a postcard you might receive from someone visiting China.

Places Amongst Us: this was the project that I was working on for SoFoBoMo 2008, that was about relationships between neighbors.

Transitional Seam: About the things that exist in between.

Neither of the three are a Novella like Insomnia, but these three could be similar in structure to In Passing. hmmm. Glad I don’t need to make a decision today, but now these three are on a slow simmer, eh?

Best regards, Doug

Published Insomnia: Hotel Noir

Insomnia: Hotel Noir copyright 2009 by Douglas Stockdale

I just announced on my Insomnia: Hotel Noir blog that I published the book with Blurb over the weekend. nice.

And this morning I received back some nice comments from David Maisel regarding my review of his book, Libraries of Dust, which I just published on The PhotoBook. That is my 49th photobook review that I have published on that blog. I am now working on my 50th (small milestone) photobook, Candida Hoefer’s Libraries.

Good start after a nice 4th of July holiday; we grilled some brats, a little cold beer and a wonderful sunny, but not too humid and hot, weekend. really nice.

Best regards, Doug

Insomnia – book almost complete

SideGate from the series Insomnia: Hotel Noir

It looks like I should be able to make the July 15th deadline for my Blurb book submission, as I just loaded this photograph, SideGate, as a full bleed image into my Booksmart page.

That leaves just one more photograph to go, and I have already completed most of the fine tune tweaking for it. And I just may have to let the photobook reviews drift a little bit, having just published Roger Ballen’s Boarding House on The PhotoBook. Next photobook review in line is David Maisel’s Library of Dust.

So now I need to get into the final editing in preparation of uploading it to Blurb. Also thinking that Insomnia will be available on the Blurb bookstore both as softcover and hardcover in the large 11 x 13″ size. At this point, it is probably getting to  where I need to convert the reporting of this project to the blog that I set up for Insomnia, at www.insomniahotelnoir.wordpress.com

Now, I set this book specific blog up, trying to follow my own advice on what to do in order to promote your own book. So I will soon seems what happens, eh?

Okay, then what do I write about here? Probably the other odds and ends stuff that comes up, and guess what? Once I complete this project, clear the decks, it is time to start working on my next project!

Wish I knew which one that will be…..but I still have a couple of weeks, eh?

Best regards, Doug

AwayStation revised

AwayStation from the series Insomnia: Hotel Noir

Well after a little too long of a hiatus, I have found my Insomnia files that seemed to have been crawling around in the garage during the studio re-model. Well, I could not find them, and I certainly would know where I had stored them, eh?

I think the kick in the pants to sort through the piles of boxes (yes, the studio is still in a bit of chaos) was the interview I in the middle of with Darius Himes, the lead judge for Blurb’s Photography.Book.Now, that I will be publishing on The PhotoBook in the next couple days.  The submission deadline of July 16th is rapidly approaching. Yikes.

And I still have five images to finish prepping. sigh.

So where did I leave off? The photograph of the AwayStation (above) when I initially prepared it for the Blurb software template as a full bleed image, had some edge content that was at risk for Blurb’s 1/8″ possible trimmingprocess. I had some alternatives to make the neccessary adjustment, but decided on adding some canvas with Photoshop for the sky in the original file.  Since the sky is an inky black, this just seemed the easiest fix. So more sky, similar crop and now I have preserved some edge details that I would like to keep. nice.

So I am making some progress. The question is, am I going to finish the development of Insomnia in time to have one copied ordered & delivered for a final press check before I submit to Blurb’s book contest? I think that it will be very tight, as I should order it this coming weekend, which is the 4th of July holiday.

Best regards, Doug

The New Renaissance Man

A good friend of mine, Larry Vogel, has started a new blog this last weekend, called The New Renaissance Man. Although Larry is primarily a photographer, represented by the Susan Spiritus Gallery here in SoCal, he is muti-talented to the point of considering himself a new Renaissance Man.

His blogging intentions are stated here:

This blog is dedicated to the original Renaissance Man, Leonardo da Vinci. It is open to a new Renaissance Generation who explore the world as Creative Seekers. If you have ever been called creative, or perhaps you have been described as a “Renaissance Man”, you are in the right place to share and explore your creativity!

Creativity is an elusive quality, so we can use all of the help we can get.

Please check it out, and let Larry know that I suggested that you stop by;- )

Best regards, Doug

Slide Shows

Slide Show copyright 2009 Sports Illustrated

When I was asked to review this book Slide Show for Sports Illustrated, my immediate thoughts went back to my own experiences with slides (or transparencies or chromes). Those 35-mm slides when exposed properly were awesome, but if the exposure was off, some really bad news. Thus the days of bracketing exposures, even when using a spot meter, or a good internal light meter, you could never be absolutely sure, and film was still considered ”cheap” even then, so bracket a few extra exposures.

When I first started to photograph in color, the economic rationale was to photograph making slides, then decided which prints to make later. I don’t know about you, but there were a lot of slides which never made it to a print, even with the best intentions. In some ways, that seems to be the case with digital now, make prints later, which does not seem to happen as much as we would like to think.

With transparency film, we also learned that Kodachrome was idea for reds and warm tones. Later Fujichrome became better known for representing greens, thus a lot of landscape photographers drifted to using it. Unless they had a sunset to shoot, then back to the Kodachrome.  Etkachrome seemed softer and muted in comparison to either of the other two chromes, but you could process it quicker. Kodachrome required that Nitrogen burst processing and it seemed that the Kodak labs did it best, but it took time.  It seemed that Kodachrome 25 was the inital King of film for those who wanted the very the highest resolution film, but that eventually was taken off the shelves, then it was Kodachrome 64.

I must of had at least two slide projectors, one of which was the Bell & Howell “Cube”, but sometime those slide shows did wear thin for your friends. I must have endured my share of these by friends as well. Dorthy and kids at the waterfall, Dorthy and kids at the beach, Dorthy and kids by the cow, etc, etc. What we endured for our friends!

For those who are interested in sports photography, sports trivia or photographs published in the magazine Sports Illustrated (aka SI), you will probably find the Sports Illustrated book Slide Show to be a delightful and entertaining book. How ever, be warned this is NOT a how-to book on photographing sports events, although by carefully examining the photographs that illustrate this book, there is still much than can be learned. My review of this book is here.

BTW, I still have a number of poly pages filled with my slides, I just ought to pull those out and print a few, eh?

Best regards, Doug