Little Bang Theory

A Holiday Outing. December 30, 2011

Well, not a traditional  Holiday outing, but an afternoon in the nearby woods, the day after Christmas.

Younger Daughter Ursula came to visit, and she and I went with Lizz and Holly up to a spot I call “Rooftopia,” just over the Vermont line.  It’s a jumble of schistose granitic boulders, just right for black & white photography, which was the general gist of the outing.

These shots are mine, obviously not black & white.

The Gang getting to the rocks:

Holly was keen on getting some B&W shots of the jumble, as well as some portraits of Yours Truly in his natural habitat (no accounting for tastes, they say.)  She came with her Cambo 4X5, a nice piece of work in and of itself:

Box cameras like this one are the film-world’s precursor to modern tilt-shift lenses like Elliot; the front and back elements can be raised or lowered (shift )  to correct perspective, or tilted (um, tilt ) to lay down a plane of sharp focus.  Her results from this venue are very moody and fraught with potential energy.  When she gets them developed to her satisfaction (we’ve only seen proofs) I’ll try to scan a couple and post them here.

I, meanwhile, was shooting digitally, snapping this one of Ursula as she patiently sat as a surrogate for me while Holly set up her complicated unit and I selfishly scampered around the rocks looking for details.

A patient Ursi:

Ursi caught me framing her in my sights, and showed a bit of her dismay at being photographed, as well as her plummeting core temperature.  She hates photos of herself, but I as a proud father love them.  I promised her this wouldn’t come out awful, or if it did, I wouldn’t post it.  I hope I haven’t done her wrong.

My detail shots, on the other hand, were rushed and came out entirely disposable.  Being that I was there at Holly’s request, I didn’t take the time to set up a tripod or apply any graduated filters, opting instead to do a furious circuit of the place and get back to the Cambo when it was ready for me.  Consequently, my shots are a train-wreck of over-exposed snow and impenetrable shadows.  That’s a visual dynamic which takes a lot more time to capture than I gave it, so my half-assed efforts were wasted.

Shoulda just stayed there and sat for the set-up.

More to follow, In Sh’Allah.