someday and it won't be long.

[terri]

I don't read any of that as pompous. I'd say you're lucky to have something in mind that is so much fun, and you finally have time to explore it.

More power to you. :thumbup: Or, as Matt says sometimes, Wave that freak flag high!

It's all good.

 

[JamesD]

I envy you: you have a vision. I've often wished I had a vision, but so far, I have no vision, no style, and barely any skill. I'm all right with the technical side, because I'm technically-minded (in real life, I'm an electronics technician). But I have almost no artistic eye whatsoever.

Yes, I envy you.

 

[terri]

I envy you: you have a vision. I've often wished I had a vision, but so far, I have no vision, no style, and barely any skill. I'm all right with the technical side, because I'm technically-minded (in real life, I'm an electronics technician). But I have almost no artistic eye whatsoever.

Yes, I envy you.

You just keep moving right along; it will come. I like what I've seen from you so far. :thumbup: Give it time; think about what is attracting you when you shoot, and ask yourself why. Study some masters and figure out what appeals to you and, again, ask yourself why. Don't try to force it. You'll figure it out.

 

[mysteryscribe]

You don't need to envy me at all. I have always been lucky. My current possition has some up sides as well as down. Retro was a downhill slide and everything grew from it.

I was floudering around experimenting with digital, when I saw the sign in the window of the closed studio. Years before I had read Weston's day books and I was fascinated with what it must have been like in those days. Most of the problems I had over the years he had as well. Am I going to make enough to pay the car payment. I can't reproduce their work exactly but I can in my way pay a little tribute to it.

I think I am going to center in on the WPA photographers of the thirties. I have decided to do a little research and try to find some of the old pictures to look at. Not the archived ones but the ones that were in ordinary use. I know a lot of them were shot for the library of congress and would be really well preserved, but surely some of them have aged.

Some of my favorite lenes date back to that time frame. I have some one thirty five glass that fits a kodak ballbearing shutter. I have a camera with such a shutter on the way now. With a little luck I can add a 4x5 with vintage glass to my 3x4 that I have been shooting lately. I also have a 2x3 vintage. I think I'm going to wind up with three vintage cut film cameras in use, and a dozen more odds and ends laying about.

I have been lucky.. While learning to build polaroid cameras, I wrote a small pamphlet and it sold well enough on ebay to buy a room full of old junk cameras. I have put together several, most are crap but I have a couple of real jewels. If I can get one really good 4x5 now I'm going to be set.

I have given this some thought lately. Since most of my cameras are cut film, I think I need to shoot cut film for some deep seated emotional reason that I don't even understand. Maybe it is the connection with the time period. Maybe it is because so much goes into each exposure, that you don't want to waste it. It would be hard for me to walk onto the porch of an old farm house and shoot a hundred digital pictures now. It probably would be just as good or better images. Somehow the images isn't all there is to it any more.

The shooting is becoming as large a part of the experience as the image itself. You might remember my rain barrel. It wasn't a great shot, but it was a shot I enjoyed making. It was a joy to stumble onto something unexpected. To think about the one shot I was going to make, as opposed to shooting ten angles and bracketing it each one twice, just because you could. When I got home a different mentality kicked in.

Okay it isn't great but how do I make it usable. I'm absolutely sure those same thoughts went through Edgar Taff's (fictional character) mind while he made shots for the WPA. Home in his dark room wondering, how do I salvage this?

It's kind of nice to try to relate what you feel, to how someone seventy odd years ago must have felt. Anyway I'm sure this is boring but it is where I'm at now.

 

[mysteryscribe]

Terri: Study some masters and figure out what appeals to you and, again, ask yourself why. Don't try to force it.

My first serious photography instructon was a painter name barbara matrose.... I spent more time with portrait painters books and landscape painters slide shows than I ever did in a dark room. I'm not all that technical but I can usually compose a picture for drama. That's what sold paintings drama. In the really early days there were no fluff pictures. The same is true of photography. In the early days it was a studio photographers world. Again during the depression it was mostly starving photographers with a pony who survived.

That is off topic but try to learn more than just photography...

 

[terri]

I would agree. I love going to museums and studying paintings, and how they captured the light. It's about imagery, for me.

 

[mysteryscribe]

How come I knew you would....

 

[ksmattfish]

When I had all the money in my hand to purchase my first DSLR with all the fixin's, I almost bought a mint condition Graflex RB Super D 4x5 SLR instead. I'm glad I went with the DSLR; I'm having a lot more fun with digital than I thought I would. I still grab a film camera more often than the digital when I walk out the door to do my own thing. Someday I'll have a 4x5 SLR though, and a client base large enough to specialize in BW film photography and gelatin silver prints.

 

[mysteryscribe]

I have to build my own, too poor to buy one....

Seriously I tried digital but it was too much like my last five years with film slr shoot shoot shoot because it was cheap to process. Now that I am retired, and don't have to produce everytime I go out with a camera, I like this old junk im shooting.

Today I broke my own rule and I'm sorry that I did. I loade five film holders to go make one shot. Wound up forcing shots that I should never have bothered to make. I don't need to make ten shots so I guess it was that old be sure you have something mentality.

Its like when I shot wedding I promised x number of proofs, so I shot crap just to be sure I had them.

 

[ksmattfish]

I have to build my own, too poor to buy one....

That's what I've decided too. I'm looking for a cheap junker for fixing up. Whenever I see this photo of Margaret Bourke White my heart is filled with lust.

http://www.ticket.it/Bourke-White/margaret.htm

 

[mysteryscribe]

for the camera????

 

[ksmattfish]

for the camera????

For the camera, for the woman, for her photography, for the adventure....

When Vikings die they are transported to the afterlife by Valkries. When I die I'll have a vision of a young Margaret Bourke-White straddling a giant metal eagle 1000s of feet in the air, holding a 4x5 SLR.

 

[mysteryscribe]

I have known exactly three female photographers in my life. All three were penniless and not much fun.... I might borrow yours lol

 

[mysteryscribe]

it's just another one of those disgusting old man editorials.

Whatever happened to integrity. You remember doing the right thing when it was hard to do. Doing it because it was right, even if it was painful. Thank god some of us still do that, but the number is dwindling. Our daily lives are filled with people who take the easy way out. I'm going to call it the New Survivor Strategy... anyone but me....

Small story,,, small scale... I needed a scanner, mine up and died... I had a few bucks in pay pal, so I took a look on ebay. I did my comparison shopping and I found one with a low starting bid. I checked the guy's feedback. He had 100% positive on a 150 sales. What I saw, and didn't put much stock in, was that he had four mutually withdrawn feedbacks. It was a lot but I had no idea what it meant. I do now.

The seller was one of those 'Let me sell your crap on ebay' things. Okay now I know, and you are warned... That is no better than buying from a pawnshop. We all know a pawn shop is where some people take stuff that si no longer wanted.

The scanner worked fine 2 years ago... has had minimal use... been in storage all that time. Man it sounded too good to be true. It was.. the scanner was crap.

I send four emails to the "I sell your crap store" before I could pin him down to exactly what his refund policy was. First of all I had to ship it back to him. When they got it back, and verified that it was crap, I got the original purchase price. Not what I paid to ship the thing to me or what I paid to ship it back. Effectively I would have paid a total of 50 bucks to get a 10 buck refund. This is getting pretty typical for ebay these days.

I figured I should warn other potential buyers. I expected him to write me a negative feedback when I wrote him one. Sad but true, some guys think you should smile while they are breaking one off in you.

But here is what really got me... Five minutes after I got the feedback posted, I had a note from ebay... He was offering to mutally withdraw both feedbacks, if I was willing. The original research came to mind... four other withdrawn feedbacks on 150 sales. It was his MO stick a negative feedback for a negative feedback,,, then offer to withdraw. That's extortion plain and simple.

I didn't agree to a withdrawal in order to make a point. Unchecked these guys can sell the same defective products, with the same way over priced shipping and the same 'no possible return polocy-return polocy, over and over.

Sometimes we need to do the right thing even if it is painful. Of course I enjoyed writing the following respose to the feedback so maybe my motives weren't so pure..

For those who have a problem distriguishing truth from fiction this is a direct copy of the feedback....

Left insulting feedback rather than accepting a refund. SELLERS BEWARE!!!!!
Seller isoldit.nd0183

( 294

) May-02-06 13:259713046898Reply by polar-deacon: he is right.....if you sell crap and offer 20% refunds please dont sell to me

I am the polar deacon lol. In case you were guessing....
The feedback system is useless when guys can manipulate it. What he wrote was the absolute truth... So was what I wrote about him on his feedback page and there on mine. I don't like that he gave me the second negative feedback I ever got. Thats out of 450 but I will take it willingly to put one on him. Why? A... because it will help the next guy like me and even more important B... He just P***ed me off.

 

[ksmattfish]

That sucks. I bid and won a Hasselblad A16 back for 6x4.5cm. When it arrived it was actually an A16S back for 4x4cm super slides. The seller refused to negotiate at all, and said I should of known better, although he clearly labeled it an A16 back, and never an A16S back. Ebay was no help. We left each other mutual negative feedback, which doesn't affect either of us. Buyer beware.