Category Archives: travels

Desert Motel Shell, California

Desert Motel Shell Infrared

This is an older image I’ve always wanted to move from the archive into the public light, and the upcoming show — for now based around presenting the truth of impermanence — is a good excuse to bring it forward and print it.

It’s a funny thing: infrared images are so good in lush places full of foliage. But I found that I made a lot of exposures when we were traveling in the California desert a few years ago. Somehow the crispness of the hills and clarity of light works well with infrared, and the bits of foliage that exist serve to bring an even greater luminosity to the image.

I may have said this before, but I’ve always like infrared photography not because it transforms reality into something stranger than it is, but rather because it shows almost more accurately sometimes, or at least provides another reasonable take on how we actually perceive it. “Normal” black and white photography may seldom ever be “normal” in that a colored lens in front of the black and white film or an interpretation of the red/green/blue balance when rendering it as black and white in photoshop will provide very different interpretations of the image. In any case my point is that each is an interpretation of the way landscape is rendered as image; we’ve just gotten more used to some standard views, and we consider them to be normal. But in what world does drab gray evoke the experience that foliage — living plant material — evokes in us. To me it is luminious, glowing with the light, never dead and drab, or seldom anyway.

So anyway, this is going into the mock-up of the coming show and then heading for the printer to see how it goes.

I think what I really like about this is the kind of open-ness that reminds me of the way I have become opened-up in my life. Some of conventional shells I shut myself into have been blown away by circumstance, or painstakingly peeled away by my own efforts, or just worn out. There are still walls left, but they’re not quite shutting out the world like they did before. Well, it’s not just that I feel like a ruin — it’s the sense of inside and outside being one. No subject, no object. Some days, some moments anyway. Some days all the walls are up, and the cheap carpeting is musty. Try to open the windows every day, at least.

This print is for sale here.

Horizontal Ladder in Curves, Iceland, 2007

Iceland Fine Art Print Infrared

Well, I’m going to cut back the philosophy for a bit and step up the photography for a bit. There are a lot of photos I want to publish!

This one just grabbed me, as they do; I hadn’t intended to post it this week. But for one thing I think it will make a great triptych with my other horizontal ascension infrared pieces from Iceland: this staircase, and this (different) ladder.

This print is for sale here.

Meditator in Temple Garden, Lumbini Nepal 2013

meditator in garden lumbini nepal

I’m freshly back from a “ten day” meditation retreat, “Vipassana,” as taught by S.N. Goenka. Though I’ve meditated promiscuously in various traditions, and studied most Buddhist meditation traditions, this is currently the technique I’m practicing in.

If you’re a meditator I’d strongly suggest doing one of these retreats to have an opportunity for some really deep practice in silence with good technique to develop concentration, awareness, and equanimity. This center is in Massachussets, but they have them all over the world. The center I went to is here. Or check out the global Vipassana website.

The retreat was long and hard, as these things are, meditating for about 17 hours a day. I applied myself to it, working really hard, and it bore fruit. By the end of 3 days I had a level of samadhi I’d never experienced before. Into that came a torrent of thoughts and memories, also pretty much unlike anything I’d felt before. I decided to place my allegience and confidence in my equanimity. That attitude was a good shift of mind. And my equanimity held up until it didn’t. By day 8 I was pretty much exhausted.

This retreat had a no-distractions rule — no pens and paper, no books, no devices — and of course no cameras. Which is lucky; I would have distracted myself with photography for sure. As it was I thought about photography a lot, definitely one of the main currents of excitements in my life.

Of course the photo above is not from this retreat. This meditator in the photo is not of that tradition, but from all appearance he was a serious practitioner. We got back from Nepal just a little over a year ago. I still have a trove of great images unpublished from that trip. This meditator sat like a rock in the bustling garden by the Maya Devi Temple (very very close to the birthplace of Buddha) the whole time we were there. We meditated on a similar tree near him for a while, but I found myself distracted — so much going on all around me, a world of energy and color. A good meditator can practice even when distracted. I did not. But I did photograph.

This print is available for sale here.

Dawn Redwood in Spring, Cambridge 2011

Dawn Redwood Mt Auburn Cemetery

Yay!!! I’ve got a new infrared camera! (but the image above is made with my old axe, as discussed below.)

Since 2006 I’ve used tried and true converted Nikon DSLR camera for infrared (I did the conversion myself, taking the camera apart, removing the “hot mirror,” and substituting a 7200 nm infrared filter). Just this week I’ve got a new rig, which is much much better. I sent my E-PL5 micro four thirds camera into a place called Kolari Vision to be converted. I’m so happy with the results, though I don’t have anything good enough to post here yet — only tests. On the whole though it is fantastic to be able to see a live view on the LCD as I work with the camera, and it looks like a nearly Black and White image on the screen, too. With the old DSLR, I looked through the viewfinder and had to visualize the image as infrared. Then, after shooting, I could see a very red and hard to read image on the LCD; it was then that I could see how the exposure came out, and adjust the exposure as necessary. This was still a big step forward from my earliest infrared work, which used 4 x 5 Kodak sheet film in holders.

There was so much trouble with this approach. I was inspired by Minor White’s success with it (at the time, in my early 20s, I was quite influenced by Minor White, who was a bit of an visual adventurer compared to many of his view-camera using contemporaries, many of whom I also admired, of course, especially Paul Caponigro). But at the time, the film holders often leaked a bit of infrared light. I had to be careful with them, and I kept them in a big metal ammo box I carried for my film holders. Then, of course, it was impossible to meter. My spot meter did a pretty poor job, and I was much better just guessing the manual exposure on the view camera. Sunny day, cloudy day — make a guess. Also, the film was quite fragile and was prone to scratching and getting pinholes in the emulsion as I developed it. Quite often the expensive sheets of film were worthless, just a mess of fog or hardly any image on a clear sheet, or full of scratches. I did get a few though, with the sheet film, like this Bare Apple, which was one of my first big successes with the medium, and which inspired me to go on. In the end I probably had a few percent of all my attempts at large format infrared sheet film turn out.

Eventually as I was a parent of young children, it was pretty hard to have so much patience with a view camera, and I found there was medium format film, which I used a bit. But that had its problem; a roll of it would tie up the camera, so I would have to shoot through the whole thing. Usually when I wanted infrared, I didn’t have it in the camera. I don’t think I have anything on the site to show for those rolls of medium format infrared film, but some may be worth scanning.

So, the converted DSLR was great in 2006, and I have done a lot of work with it; far more than is posted here. That camera fell off the seat of a jeep in the jungle in Nepal last year, ruining the top LCD display. It still works and is quite usable, but like I say, I’m very excited for this step up, and I’ve got lower noise, higher ISO, a good choice of excellent micro four thirds lenses, and small enough to carry along with standard-light photo gear. I did that before of course, but it was another entire DSLR bag across one of my shoulders.

When I started doing digital infrared, there wasn’t much talk about post-processing, and I knew I wanted black and white images in the end (even if at times I simulated the split toning I used to do with selenium and silver chloride paper int he darkroom — simulated that traditional toning with a photoshop color layer). But when I revisited the camera conversion this time around, I ran into a lot of talk about post processing, and the different color aspects of the various wavelength infrared filters I had to choose from. The takeaway is that I became newly aware that there is color information in the infrared image which can be useful. While I am not a fan of crazy over-the-top color effects, I became intrigued by the possibility of having a bit of color information to work with instead of just throwing all color away to start working with the image, which I had done previously.

So for the image above, I used this color to separate the redwood tree from the busy background, and I found I could make this image work. Before I did this, I could never find a way to present this image without it being too busy. I’m pretty happy with this interpretation, with just a tiny bit of tonal variation.

This print is for sale here.

Two Lifeguards in a Boat, Ocean Grove NJ 2013

two lifeguards in a boat at dawn nj

There was some timeless time this summer; beach time with loved ones; Cape Cod and then NJ.

As usual, there is a big backlog of material I want to post, but I thought I would post something pretty fresh.

That week in August in Ocean Grove NJ was a mix of so much that is New Jersey — there is a rich and vibrant ecosystem, and then there is the bustle and bluster, the Chris Christy, the opposite of a sane and harmonious landscape.

There is always timelessness, always space. Just as the atoms that build us are almost entirely empty space, just so, spaciousness of mind permeates even the densest sense that we are caught-in-time. This is good for me to remember as it is about to get cold in Vermont, and I am behind in my chores and also some photographic work.

In my sense of life being too dense, I have to remember that it’s not really. I make it dense with my thinking, but the thoughts themselves have no substance, no density, no reality.

This print is for sale here.

Horizontal Staircase, Iceland

horizontal staircase, infrared, iceland

I posted last week’s Icelandic horizontal Ladder image from a beach vacation, which was quite lovely and full of photographs. Instead of posting some of that new work, I’ll continue along this thread of ancient inspiration.

Last week’s ladder came up out of nowhere to be a “finished” work, but this week’s Horizontal Staircase image has been brewing for a long time. I see it a lot, among the images I want to work on, but until now, somehow I’ve never been able to correctly “print” it, even to screen. Interpreting, manifesting the raw image is more than half the battle in photography.

I’ve probably mentioned before in this blog what a valuable experience it was, while studying with John Sexton in 1982, (he was at the time Ansel Adam’s assistant) to see the process of an Ansel Adams print. We had the opportunity to view a series of prints, or really versions of a single print, of Ansel Adams, from straight print through several work prints, to a final print. The work prints detailed the burning, dodging, and chemistry changes, and the impact on the prints was dramatic. The original straight print was really pretty dull, until he figured out how to make it speak, until he ultimately “performed” it. Ansel used to say that the negative is like a composers score, and the print is the performance (and it may be performed differently at different times).

So, with this horizontal staircase, I’ve had some trouble over the last 6 years, since exposing it. I knew I wanted to give it wings, but I just couldn’t get it right. Inspired by last week’s image, I decided that these two are a series, and indeed they were exposed within a few hundred yards of each other. I used some technical direction from last week’s final post, and I think I’ve got this image to where it’s good enough to post. Yay!

In other news on the lehet.com front, I’ve implemented, or done the technical implementation, for retina image displays in the lightbox display from the home page, and eventually for the “detail” pages. But now I have a huge amount of image resizing and image-size-code to put in place. Well, if you have a “retina” device, like a newer iPad, they will look quite splendid.

This print is for sale here.

boy with phone, woman with hand, waiting for James Turrell at the Guggenheim

Waiting for James Turrell at the Guggenheim

This is not my usual style, out of all my usual styles, but I like it. Like the last few weeks’ entries, there is a strange juxtaposition of the image and the context. There was a long line, about an hour, to gain access to the James Turrell installation on the fifth floor of the Guggenheim. Because the open interior of the spiral was closed off, the hall with so many of us in line felt a little bit claustrophobic, and certainly echoing the busy energy of a crowd in New York City on a Sunday afternoon.

But strangely, in that crowd, the light and space create an image of spaciousness and openness here in the photo.

Unfortunately I was disappointed in this exhibit, at least in that context on that day. The museum was all abuzz, and it was crowded. Turrell’s work is meditative, and all about opening to a slow, quiet experience of light, space, and our own role as a perceiver, as a participant in the light and space. I love his work. But on this day for many of the pieces I couldn’t slow and open enough to participate in this slow dance of perception he invites. At least that day on the Guggenheim I did slow enough to experience light and space, and humanity in 2013, to make this exposure. I had a chance to see a rather extensive show of Turrell pieces well over a decade ago in a quiet space, and I really hope I get to do it again.

A page about James Turrell is here. If you ever get a chance to see a show of James Turrell works, do it.

This print is available for sale here.

Four Theravadan Monks Photographing in Lumbini, Nepal

Four Theravada Monks Photographing at Lumbini

This is an interesting example of how an image can change over time — change from the first impression at the time of exposure, then as it settles in, and then still more as the world changes past the still moment.

My sense while making the exposure was that this was funny. These monks had just been doing some amazing chanting in Pali under the bodhi tree at Lumbini. One of them, the subject of the monks’ photography, was obviously highly venerated, maybe the head of the monastery back home, somewhere in southeast Asia. Burma? So here were these renunciates, monks of the most ancient and pure lineage of Buddhism, who had just been chanting in a 2300 year old language, and they had some expensive, high-end photography gear; they were being tourists like the rest of us. And of course with the saffron color and scene, it made for a good on- the-fly composition. I guess I thought it was funny in the way nuns on a barstool might be funny.

As time passed, out of the context, it seemed less funny to me. Somehow the plain-human quality of the monks started to shine though, and of course plain humans use cameras all the time. Also the composition started to stand up on its own, apart from concept. The origional notion faded into less significance as the photo became its own thing, as they do.

Recently, the world was shaken a little bit, at least the Buddhist world, and this photo changed with it, again. Last Sunday the 1500 year old Mahabodhi temple in Bodgaya, India, was bombed in a terror attack. That is the spot where the Buddha found the enlightened quality of his mind 2500 years ago, and now it’s being bombed with IEDs to randomly harm innocent people.

Just as I, and the monks in these photo, were tourists in Lumbini, Nepal, there were people just like us, the monks and I, at Bodgaya, who could have been hurt in the bombings. A few monks were indeed injured.

Pink Wall, Market & Umbrella

OK, we didn’t spend all our time at Buddhist sites.

(And of course we spent some great time with friends.)

There is a lot of chaos and energy in the streets of Kathmandu. Luckily I’m not afraid of a little chaos and energy in a composition.

One thing I loved so much that my heart was breaking at the thought of leaving it: the texture on the walls, everywhere. And the color.

Seriously, on the last few days I photographed a lot of walls, just to compose with the textures. My wife, who speaks Nepali, could hear people asking, “What is he doing? What is he taking a picture of?”

But here it’s obvious, the limes, the men, the wall, the kid under the umbrella. Just another tourist with a camera.

This print is for sale here.

Swayambhunath Sunrise, Woman Sitting, 2013

I’m just back from a month in Nepal, photographing and visiting with friends of my wife. Now they are friends of mine. An amazing time with Nepali people and places.

Visiting the ancient Buddhist sites (but also some of the newly built or upgraded ones!) was one of the grab-me-by-the-shirt-collar facets of this experience — and certainly one I will naturally attempt to convey through photography. There was an intensity to the experience of being in these old and well-worn deep places that will of course be beyond anyone’s skills, as a photographer, writer, whatever. It was intense in a beyond-the-ordinary way of intensity, something that tingled my skin and rang my bones like a bell.

On this day we woke well before dawn and took a taxi to this ancient stupa, Swayambhu and we stayed from dawn past lunch. I can’t remember why we left at all. I didn’t want to leave any of these places, but there was always something pulling to the next thing we had to do.

Regular readers of the blog will know that I’ve spent a good bit of my life and time exploring the resonances between physical spaces and emotional or psychic experiences — and that I explore the possibility of pulling some of that resonance through the two dimensional space of a photograph. What I felt in some of these places is beyond that possibility. I won’t pretend I can do anything like that — but time in these places in Nepal also showed me that my old sense of the power of a physical space or object was completely wrong and is now obsolete. So who knows…

Some other mind-blowing aspects of the experience I did capture: for one, the warmth of the people I now consider my friends. I did find a lot of their warmth came through in their smiles, in photos to be shared privately, not here.

Another poignant facet of this month was the experience of people shining through the brokenness of the world. Specifically in Nepal there are a lot of things physical and politically/socially structural that cause a lot of suffering. As many Republicans in the US want to “make the government so small it can drown in a bathtub,” the Nepalis experience what 20 years of a non-functioning, minimal, hands-off government does. There is no EPA, no traffic lights, insufficient electricity, running water, and garbage collection. And that sucks. The suffering from this is nothing to glamorize. The amazing thing is that the warmth and radiance of so many people shine through it. They are not buying assault rifles and hoarding cans, like many Americans in fear of decline. Actually already in a fallen-apart culture, many beautiful people shine through the brokenness like a bright light inside a cracked pot.

As a photographer, I found it trivially easy to document the brokenness. Conveying the shining-through radiance is another task altogether, and the coming weeks will tell if I’ve succeeded at that (beyond, as I said, private photos of friends.)

Stay tuned. Lots more Nepal to come.

This print is for sale here.