Bruce Barnbaum Workshop

Last weekend was a part of a six day marathon of sorts where I put 900 miles on my car over six days.

Three of those days were spent with Bruce Barnbaum (www.barnbaum.com) in his “Art of Seeing” workshop. Bruce is arguably one of the best black and white photographers and traditional printers in the world today. His 16×20 prints from 4×5 negatives were astounding in their detail and luminosity.

The image “Boulder & Metamorphosis Wave” is just one example and I urge anyone who loves black and white photography to visit Bruce’s web site and explore his portfolios.

The main part of the workshop time involved the participants presenting a portfolio of work for critique and discussion by Bruce and the other participants. This was not an exercise for the faint-hearted. Although overall the feedback was quite positive, I found that some of what I thought were my best images were evaluated as not so interesting even though one of those had been in two juried exhibitions and had won an award in one of the shows.

I was reminded that lacking obvious technical flaws, the process of reviewing, judging or jurying photographs (or any art) is a very subjective process. Whether the feedback is positive or negative, the artist must put it in context and make his or her own decision about how to apply the information.

But overall, I found the feedback very valuable and the good news was that my more recent work got the most positive comments and the consensus was that it was the strongest work in my portfolio.

We also did one field shoot Saturday at dawn at Pennyfield Lock on the C&O Canal. I had to leave the house at 5 am to get to the location by 6:30. I anticipated this with some trepidation with the weather forecast having freeze warnings for that morning.

However, a couple of cups of coffee got me started and when I got to the location I set the camera on a tripod and set off to find photographs. I said that getting up in the middle of the night, going out and freezing my butt off waiting for the sunrise was not my idea of fun. A mist hung over the Potomac as the air warmed fairly quickly and there was little wind. I hardly felt cold and actually enjoyed myself.

Click on the image for more

The six day marathon was completed after two days in Morgantown, WV where Malinda and I attended the 2009 Arts Assembly representing the Berkeley Arts Council.

A fun and interesting few days but I am glad to be home.

Upcoming Exhibits

Jefferson County Photography Project Exhibit

Those of you who saw my blog entry for July 10 know I have been participating in a workshop led by Benita Keller, the purpose of which is to photograph people, places, and things in Jefferson County, WV over a several month period.

"Frozen Daquiris", Jefferson County Fair, 2009

The project is also designed to be done with black and white film with traditional silver prints created in a darkroom. It has been a challenge for me to get back into doing this after about 18 years since I actually made prints in a darkroom and having worked entirely in digital format for the last seven years.

We have photographed landscapes, portraits and a variety of events. For me, one of the goals was to overcome my nervousness about photographing people. Overall, I thought I have made some progress. You can see some of my “new friends” from the Jefferson County Fair in my SmugMug gallery.

We have been at work on this project for about three months now and we are having a ‘first phase’ exhibit at the South Jefferson Public Library in Summit Point, WV, opening October 4 and running throught the end of November. I will have several prints in the exhibit along with work by Benita Keller and other members of the project team including Joanna Pecha,Frank Robbins, Cindy Mason, Steve Alenskis, and Jessica Hartman.

You’re invited to a reception at the library on Sunday, October 4 from 1 to 3 pm. The library is located at 49 Church Street in Summit Point, WV.

Upcoming Exhibit at the Jean Heiler Art Gallery

I will have a solo exhibit in the Jean Heiler Art Gallery located in the Old Opera House Theatre in Charles Town, WV opening Friday evening October 23. I will be showing a selection of new architectural images including some that will be exhibited for the first time.

The exhibit coincides with the performances of the Pulitzer Prize winning play “Doubt: A Parable” which also opens on October 23. Please come in and visit on the 23rd and see an excellent dramatic presentation in the theatre.

News from the Berkeley Arts Council

Finally, I want to call your attention to the newly created Berkeley Arts Council. The Council was formed just a little over a month ago to serve the arts community in Berkeley County, WV. If you live in the Eastern Panhandle or surrounding area and would like to know what’s happening in the arts, one of the best ways to do it is to subscribe to the Berkeley Arts Bulletin.

Nancy Rodig Regional Exhibit

I’m pleased to report that I have three images accepted for the 2009 Nancy Rodig Regional Juried Art Exhibit at The Arts Centre  in Martinsburg, WV.

One of the images, “The View from the Court“, was also exhibited in the juried members’ exhibit at the Metropolitan Visual Arts Center in Rockville, MD.

The other two were somewhat surprise picks for me. They were both captured on my visit to Pittsburgh last May. The first is an image of the stacks on the site of the old Homestead Steel Works. Today the stacks are almost all that is left from the huge steel mill and they are now surrounded by shopping plazas, restaurants and condominiums.

The second image is a shot from downtown Pittsburgh, where I captured two of the high rise buildings in somewhat of an abstract composition.

The exhibit will be on display at The Arts Centre gallery through October 31 at 300 West King Street in Martinsburg. The opening reception is Saturday, September 12 from 5 – 7 pm.

21st Century Hieroglyphics Exhibit Opens September 5

I will be opening the exhibit, “21st Century Hieroglyphics” exhibit at the Contemporary School for the Arts and Gallery in Hagerstown on Saturday, Sepember 5.

The exhibit consists of poster-size prints from images captured in an old quarry in Quincy, Massachusetts. I have made two trips to this place and it continues to be fascinating. The rough granite walls of this quarry are covered with an amazing array of spray-painted color and commentary that ranges from poignant to sinister to celebratory to downright chaotic.

As I walked around the area, I tried to imagine what an archeologist a thousand years from now would think upon the discovery of these strange messages painted on rock walls. Would they know about it that far in the future or would they look at this as evidence of some religious cult or political uprising.

Here are a few more examples from an earlier blog post.

The gallery is located at 4 West Franklin Street in Hagerstown. The opening reception is Saturday, September 5 from 6-9pm.

HDRI Workshop September 26-27

Those of you who received my newsletter a few days ago received the information about my upcoming High Dynamic Range Imaging (HDRI) workshop coming up in September. Details on the workshop including online registration is on my web site.

High dynamic range imaging is not just another special effect technique. It allows the photographer to capture and display the full range of luminance in a scene. The latest software tools allow you to process the images to look completely natural, yet reproducing full detail in shadow areas without blowing out the highlights. It’s not about altering reality (unless you want to) but it’s actually about reproducing a scene in the full range of luminance that you can see with your eyes. On the other hand, you can introduce a great variety of different looks to an image. It’s really only limited by your imagination.

For those who are not all that familiar with HDR, I’ve assembled a group of images on my new SmugMug gallery that illustrate the range of treatments that are possible with HDR Imaging.

You can see that there is a range of effects from very natural – no real indication that it is HDR – to a “painterly” effect to a highly processed “grunge” effect. In some cases the goal was a natural look with a slightly “painterly” feel. In other cases the “painterly” effect is more pronounced. The point is that the HDR software along with Photoshop gives a wide range of control over how your image will ultimately look.

After taking my workshop, you will be able to capture HDR images and process them to whatever level of effect is right for your particular images. Please contact me at sterlingimageswv (at) gmail (dot) com if you are interested in the workshop but have questions.

Maine Workshop, Postscript

The workshop officially ended Friday night with a great multimedia presentation of work from all of the workshops that week. It was pretty cool to see several of my images projected on a theater sized screen.

But thanks to the generosity of our instructor Tillman Crane, there was a wonderful unexpected bonus in store for some of us on Saturday morning. We were invited to visit his home and studio in nearby Camden, Maine, for a demonstration of platinum-palladium printing.

The process is on one hand complex, yet in other ways fairly straighforward. First, Tillman mixes small amounts of several chemicals, including platinum and palladium, into a solution that is coated onto the paper. By varying the amount of each element, he can control contrast and tone in the print. Once the paper is dry (he uses a hair dryer to dry the paper in just a couple of minutes!) he sets up the negative and paper in a vacuum contact printing frame and exposes the print in a specially made light box where the paper is exposed to high intensity ultra-violet light.

From there, the print is developed in a process that is very similar to the processing of a silver print except that the chemicals are different.

Platinum-palladium prints have a different look from traditional silver prints. My perception is that while the prints are rich in tone, the blacks are typically not quite as deep, but the tonal transitions are beautifully smooth. The prints generally have a slight warm tone to them but that is controllable by the chemical mix in the emulsion.

The darkroom for platinum printing is not nearly as dark as in a standard darkroom for silver printing. The emulsion is primarily sensitive to UV light so the room is lit with 40-watt “bug” lights and the paper is perfectly safe. I realized that for old-time platinum printers – the process was invented in the 1880s – the only way to expose the paper was to set the print frame out in the sun!

All in all, it was a great week. I thoroughly enjoyed Tillman’s workshop and the others in the class were diverse, interesting, and very talented. While I learned much from Tillman, I also got valuable insights from my classmates.

I waited a long time to take the plunge into one of these workshops. Having done so, I am already hoping to return for another, and another.

Maine Workshop, Day 5

The last day of the workshop dawned dark, gray, and rainy. Undaunted, our class traveled to Fort Knox. No, not in Kentucky, but Fort Knox State Park in Maine. No gold here, but a massive structure of granite and brick that was built to guard approaches to Bangor, Maine near the mouth of the Penobscot River.

Due to the rain, we worked mostly inside the fort, which featured many arched passageways and long, dark corridors. Many of the spaces were lit by narrow gun ports. The soft subdued light filtering in from the outside was ideal for long exposure images of the interior.

The interesting light also gave some opportunities for some HDR (High Dynamic Range) images.

This is a place where I could return again and again, finding new things on every trip. Unfortunately, it’s a day and a half drive from home, so I will have just have to find a way to take more Maine workshops to get me closer for at least a few days at a time.

Maine Workshop Days 3 & 4

Wednesday I was dispatched Rockport to photograph a park. It was a pretty ordinary park, but my assignment was to find an extraordinary image anyway. I can’t say that I was particularly successful, but I did a number of shots of the white birch trees that I always find attractive due to their textures.

Then after lunch we were off to the obligatory lighthouse, where I saw first hand the “rocky Maine coast.” It had been heavy overcast all morning but as we arrived the clouds started to break up. With a fresh breeze off the ocean, the temperature became comfortable and it ended up being a delightful outing.

Thursday brought more rain and cloudy weather but we were undaunted. We visited the Olsen House in Cushing, Maine, a favorite with the Workshops. Once the home of Maine Artist Andrew Wyeth, this old farmhouse has been preserved as a museum. The cloudy weather provided wonderful soft light through the windows and doors of the house and everyone found much to photograph. Here are just a small sampling of the images I found.

I’ll be working up many more from the Olsen house over the next few months.

Maine Workshop Day 2

I’m making two posts today to try to get caught up. I was hoping to update this day to day during the workshop but each day was full of class discussion, shooting, and editing. It was a very intense but rewarding week.

The second day of the workshop got beyond photographing my room and the next assignment was photographing the Rockport Library. I can’t say that I acquired any “extraordinary” images there, but I enjoyed the process. It was a very nice small town library with a touch of nostalgia.

The children’s section was especially nice.

After lunch, we piled into two cars and went off to Elmer’s Barn, a truly extraordinary place! Having prowled “antique” and downright junk stores in many places, this place was the ultimate. In about two hours, we were barely able to scratch the surface.

As I was wandering around this place, I definitely saw it in black and white.

The old car was gradually being swallowed up by the weeds.

Inside was unimaginable chaos, but one got the impression that the old gentleman who ran the place knew just about everything that was in there and where to find it – not to mention its value.

Little gems like this were everywhere, in among the piles of old tools, rusty hardware, old bottles, and who knows what.

Maine Workshop, Day 1

I returned from Rockport to Braintree last Saturday having completed a great workshop with Tillman Crane.

The workshop, entitled “Extraordinary Images in Ordinary Places,” was not about technical things or even about technique. It was more about how you think about looking for images.

There were six of us in the class and we photographed different things every day and followed up by critique and discussion.

Each day, we were assigned “ordinary” places to photograph. The locations ranged from local parks, to locations around the Workshops campus. My first assignment was to photograph my room! Daunted that I was – this was a very plain vanilla motel style room – I went in with determination to come out with something. What I came out with was so abstract that nobody could tell what it was until I showed a different angle.

Then I moved the camera a bit …

My idea was to do a study of the way the light reflected off the different surfaces.

Not exactly “high art” but still an interesting exercise.