Summer in Boise

From the winter of 2008, we move to the summer of 2008.  That summer, the NSA convention was in Boise. I went and took my TL120-1 along. Aside from the good time, good conversations, and good theater, there was great weather. I don’t know what the folks in Boise thought of it, but it was warm and dry (certainly not Juneau weather) and it appealed.

These were the two better street-shots of the two rolls I burned in Boise. Both are from a hand-held TL120-1.

Not Too Close / Plowing Prow

The winter ice has been terrible at the Mendenhall Glacier this year. The combination of snow, rain, and avalanches has meant I haven’t ventured near it, much less tried to cross it to get new winter images of the glacier. These two views from 2008 (captured with my TL120-55) will have to suffice. The area of ice pictured here is now long gone. In the summer it is open water. In the winter, it is lake ice.

Not Too Close

This image is taken about a mile and quarter across the lake from where I laced on my skates. Because of the current lake level, Scan000010there is a patch of stable, rocky beach here. Because of cliff and creeks, it isn’t possible to walk around the lake to get to this bit of beach. Crossing the lake is the only way. Everything off that bit of beach is in flux and subject to change at any moment.

The cracks parallel to the shore show that the lake ice has sunk, and may again. The white froth beside the green glacier is a flowing and frozen waterfall. There is another stream coming down closer to the camera. Both are flowing under the ice, taking relative warmth, and creating areas of thinner lake ice. The glacier is calving from above and below, even in winter. Because of all this, approaching the glacier is a dance with an uncertain beast. I hunt for images and capture them as I approach, never certain when I’ll decide I’ve gone close enough and its time to retreat.

This image was made early in the morning’s dance. The colors and textures beckoned me closer despite the poor ice conditions.

Plowing Prow

Closer (and farther to the left) than the previous one, I captured this image. My exploration is stymied. The lake ice has been broken and refrozen several times, Scan000009and there is water between the farther cracks. The advancing glacier has plowed up the lake ice like I might my driveway. Farther back there are pieces of lake ice resting 10′ out of the water, having been lifted there by the rising glacier. The textures in the ice in front of me still beckon, but I declare the dance done and retreat.

Into the Wild

I’ve added these thumbnails so we will have somewhere to hang comments. –John

Coney Island Mermaid with Umbrella

Scan000084Coney Island Mermaid with Umbrella- Jim Harp

Shot with a TL-120 and a Vivitar 285H fill-flash with plastic diffusor.   The fill flash is an important element in this shot, without it her face would have mostly been in shadow.     The Coney Island Mermaid Parade happens on the first Saturday after the Summer Solstice every year and is a wonderful opportunity to get interesting people shots.   There are plenty of photographers with interesting rigs who attend, but the TL-120 never fails to attract attention.

Gogarty’s Pub, Dublin

Scan000086Gogarty’s Pub

This was shot with a Twin Yashica-Mat 124 rig early in the morning since I was in Ireland on business and didn’t have time for picture taking during the day.   I had good luck with the shutters on this rig when they were set to one second, so I probably shot this at one second and used spot metering to determine the aperture.    Provia 100F pushed one stop.

Inaugural Offerings

Geoffrey Waldo is our newest member in 2013. As you may be able to discern from his images, New Mexico is home.

I’ll go out on a limb and suggest these images were created with a TL120-1.

–John Thurston

Foliage

Last fall, I got on a foliage kick.  Finally, after many years of dismissing foliage imagery as “beneath me,” I thought, okay, it does look pretty spectacular, and maybe MF3d would be a good way to capture the beauty of some of our foliage here in Central VA.  So for a couple of weeks I went around shooting foliage.  Most of the shooting was digital video, actually, and there’s a video I ended up publishing on YouTube, best seen on a 3DTV in HD:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1mU646qYeM

But some of the trees I found were SO spectacular, digital could not do them justice.  One of them is in the view I’ve put in this folio “Foliage.”  I loved the structure of the tree, and the many different colored leaves that it had on display: lots of yellow and red, to be sure, but also greens and browns.  The mid-morning sun was backlighting the leaves to brilliant effect.   I had first been attracted to this tree, because it was dropping leaves.  I was trying to get video of leaves coming down towards the camera(s).  But then I noticed the tree for its own sake…  The next day I went back to the tree, bringing the Sputnik and some rolls of Velvia, and it really captured the colors beautifully.

This view is almost as it would be if you were lying on your back underneath the tree.  And I could have done so all day!  Who needs TV, with trees like this right outside?  The tree was in a busy part of UVA campus called “The Corner,” but you’d almost never see anyone taking notice of it.  Truth be told, I had not noticed this tree until this fall, when I was really looking for foliage imagery, and I’ve been in that general area thousands of times over the past 30 years.