This was another experiment to do something a little different with a stereo image. I tried following the ride as it was moving to get a crisp subject with a streaked background. Can’t claim success, but I’m encouraged to keep a’tryin’. One of the challenges was the lighting, which was a combination of fluorescent and tungsten. The original film I got back was awful to look at — super saturated ugly yellow-orange where you should see white. With some experimentation I settled on two filters stacked — one fluorescent and one blue. I think it was an FL-B and an 80A. If I remember right, the ideal exposure would have been 1/15th of a second but I couldn’t get there with my filters, even with pushing the film. I think these were shot at 1/8 second. I could probably get there with a flash that’s gelled for tungsten and fluorescent. Maybe next year! I’m not sure if this is the exact same image that’s in the folio (I sent some images in by mail and didn’t note exactly which scans they matched!). TL-120 with Provia 400X pushed to the limit.
Category Archives: FolioA
Aspen Abstract
This was a ‘proof of concept’ experiment in creating an abstract 3D image. It isn’t all I had hoped it would be, but it isn’t discouraging me either! Taken with the TL-120. Don’t recall the settings (I’m writing this after the slide was sent in, so answers could be on the mount!). Probably something like a quarter or eighth of a second exposure. Camera is swept down, hopefully level, and the shutter pressed when already in motion. I also don’t know if this image is the same one as the slide in the folio, but it’s in the same spirit.
Flowers on Stone
Juneau is a gold mining town. Every where you turn, you find remnants of the placer and hard-rock mining. South of Juneau, a pier stand abandoned in the water. Its pilings are bleached and trees grow from its surface. On the shore stand the pillars which supported the rail-line out to the pier.
When it was a working facility, the ships from Seattle would dock here in Dupont to offload their cargo of dynamite. It would be trundled down the rail-line to an elevated warehouse along the shore. From there, smaller loads would be transported by boat to the mines in Treadwell, Douglas, and Juneau.
Excepting the iron bits, the pier, dock, and warehouse were built from local materials. This image may be better named, Flowers From Stone, as the concrete is covered with the efflorescence from the beach sand and gravel.
I tried to set the focus and aperture to let the distant pier fall out of focus. I think I could have opened the aperture a bit more.
Lunch on Ice
Once again, I’m chasing the retreating ice. More often than not, there is now a kayak pulled up on the rocks after I’ve walked all the way out. It would be a lot quicker way to arrive than on foot!
In this case, this group arrived in a pair of kayaks and settled in for lunch before doing their exploring. The “rock” they are on is actually a gravel-covered block of ice. The ice will melt over the next couple of months, leaving only a pile of sand and gravel. The fall rains and winter snow will probably wash the remaining sand down into the lake by spring.
The area of darkened ice on the face of the glacier is an area where the under-ice river flows out into the lake. The in-rushing water is leaving ripples in the otherwise still lake.
Home of the Nymph
You might be tempted to misidentify this as your basic, Southeast Alaska, rainforest stream. There are so many of them, it’s hard to get anywhere without having to find your way across a couple dozen of them. But this, I’m sure, is the home of an elusive Water Nymph. I’ve tried numerous times to catch a glimpse, but I’m always disappointed. I probably make so much noise getting through the undergrowth, that she’s able to make herself scarce before I arrive.
Where the Rain Fell
In the summer of 2015, I did another long walk looking for tripod holes. I load my pack with a TL120, a digital SLR, maybe a W1, a box of slides, and a STL viewer. The task is to find the locations, and recreate the view. The challenge is to make an engaging image in a location which probably no longer has the jaw dropping magnificence of its youth.
It is hard to suppress the cringing and pain I feel as I search for tripod holes. I have a visual memory. My trek across the barren rock is a long slow playback of previous excursions, narrated by my little voice, “I remember when . . .”, “We forded the stream up there . . . “, “This used to be . . .”.
This location happens to be where I made some of my favorite images. I know one made it into the folio. Others, including Raining Tunnel, made their way into a slide display at the NSA convention in Colorado. The camera location recorded in this thumbnail (from 2010) is just about where the cliff wall exits the right side of the stereo view. In this case, I was unable to create any meaningful image by putting my tripod back into those holes. I chose, instead, to move my camera to the vantage point from which I had made the 2010 self-image.
In 2010, the water ran into a ice tunnel of uncertainty and opportunity. I knew it fell into the lake somewhere, but how far would I venture into that tunnel to find and capture images. In 2015, it is a spread of certainty. The fireweed and willow have taken root, the stream runs in the open, and a Southeast rain forest will soon own this location.
Iconic Images
- St. Elias – Vault Icons
- St. Elias – Entrance Icon
- St. Elias – Orthodox Church
- St. Elias – Sacristy
- St. Elias – Sacristy
Alpine Barn, Dolomites, Italy
Dolomite Mountains
Location Alta Via Trail, 3 hrs N Venice
Technical Fuji GA645w (cha-cha no slide bar ), Fuji Provia F100
Comments In July of 2014 my wife and I trail ran and trekked the
Dolomites in the Italian Alps. There is a lot to see here: the classic
Dolomite peak craggy rock formations, the wild flowers that slowed down
just enough for me to take this stereo pair cha-cha, maybe not the
moving clouds in the bg.
Lagazuoi Sauna, Dolomites, Italy
Location Alta Via Trail, 3 hrs N Venice
Technical Fuji GA645w (cha-cha no slide bar ), Fuji Provia F100
Comments In July of 2014 my wife and I trail ran and trekked the
Dolomites in the Italian Alps. This view is the famous sauna at the
Lagazuoi refugio that awaits you after a long trek to get there.
Dolomite pond, Dolomites, Italy
Submission 2014
I wanted to dedicate my submission this year to David Lee, who was a great master of medium format 3d and who I was lucky enough to meet. His work has been an inspiration to me.
- Busan Igidae park, this was a beautiful park, this picture was taken on a windy day with the waves crashing in the foreground, and the Busan skyline, and bridge in the background. This was shot with the tl120 at f/11 1/250.
- Gyeogju, this is a hyperstereo with 50 foot separation Fuji gf670w fuji velvia.
- San Francisco. I took this picture in San Francisco, please excuse, the ship motion artifacts between the two shots. Fuji gf670w 60 foot separation. David Lee met me and drove me up to the viewpoint for this shot.
- Gyeongju temple: This is a wooden bell in the temple on one of the excursions of ISU Korea 2015.
Thank you for allowing me to share my work. I have enjoyed yours on this round
Nik Sekhar
Foliage (aftermath)
We have a number of trees on our property. Last year we were very busy with our jobs, with Jet, late summer and fall, and so we kept having to postpone raking leaves… or we just didn’t feel like it. The more they accumulated, the less we’d feel like it! Sometime in December, we just had to do it. It became a huge chore taking us the better part of two days. I think we hauled two dozen TARPfulls to the curb, I bet close to a ton of leaves, no joke. Only a 3D picture can properly convey the mass, the heaps and mountains of leaves collected.
Shot with Sputnik, f22 probably, 1 sec. on Provia I guess.
Xmas 2014
“Candid” tripod shot on Christmas eve, when (according to German tradition) the tree is lit for the first time. Boris and Michele on the left, then Jet, and Sarah, his godmother. Probably shot on Kodak E200, 1 second exposure, f8? Focus variable throughout – not the best situation for the Spud’s optics. Lighting is tungsten and a bit of window light. Jet’s godfather, Travis, released the shutter.
2 Close 4 Comfort
Just a few houses down from us is an intersection that I’ve always judged to be hazardous. Melbourne Avenue intersects with Kenwood Lane in a “T” in such a way as to invite sleepy or otherwise impaired motorists onto your property. Melbourne goes over a little rise right before meeting Kenwood on a little steep downhill. The rise prevents a motorist from seeing the stop sign until about the last hundred feet before the intersection. If you don’t know the roads, and you’re going too fast, chances are you’d not be able to stop – especially because coming over the rise your car would be “lifting,” and your traction would be reduced.
To make matters worse, DIRECTLY in the path of Melbourne, i.e. exactly opposite Melbourne, is a house, 1321. When I first saw this arrangement, I immediately thought: I would not want to live in that house; but if I was forced into it, I’d always park some kind of large, heavy, junk car in front of the house. Well, of course the current owners never do that (and amazingly, STILL don’t do it).
So, coming home at night last winter, we noticed a lot of flashing lights just down the road from us. Jet is totally into emergency vehicles, so we went to have a look. I had a peculiar suspicion. Sure enough, an automobile was lodged in the living room of the house opposite Melbourne Ave. Upon coming closer, though, I noticed that it was not 1321 – the house right opposite the intersection – but 1323, the house next to it. The car had come over the rise much too fast and could not stop. The driver had tried to make a left turn, but came nowhere near completing the turn. They jumped the curb, plowed through some bushes, and ended up as you see in the picture, entering the house at a diagonal angle.
To their great fortune, the family was not at home. I ran back to our house and grabbed the Spud and a tripod. With a policeman’s permission I set up at the corner of the property. I shot a roll exposing between 15 and 30 seconds onto RXP (fuji 400ASA). Local TV and newspaper reporters were there too. In the aftermath the story circulated: this driver had been running from the police, all the way from interstate, outside the city. They had come into town at high speed, taking random turns, ending up at this very unsuitable intersection.
The house has just been repaired, some nine months later. I guess it took a while to get the insurance money straightened out. I’ve not yet talked to the homeowners about the event – I might give them a stereoview sometime as a conversation starter. But I have talked to the neighbors at 1321, where I always thought such a mishap would be the most likely: they were surprised by the event, but remain otherwise not much more concerned than before, still not parking their car in front of their house.