Bird Fetish Carving Native New Mexican

by Geoffrey S. Waldo
Native American Fetish Carving

Native American Fetish Carving

This was done using a segmented mirror beam splitter box and a Sigma DP3 Merrill, with a front 3 diopter 72 mm diameter achromat for extra magnification. This little carving is only 1-1/4″ tall. I bought it from a Native American artist in Albuquerque from the State Fair 2006. I am looking for his name, but can’t find the receipt. If I find it I will update the post. This was done with a ring flash held off-camera (up and to the left). with a black velvet background. You can see the plastic base the carving was resting on. The lower left photo is the mirrorbox with the top off. The two first surface mirrors direct  the left and right halves of the camera frame along axes that give a 12 mm stereobase. Stereophotomaker corrects the slight keystone distortion nicely. Its made from 1/4″ ABS sheet solvent welded. The lower left face of the cube has a filter mount for screwing on AR filter and accessory lenses, the right face has a filter mount with adapter which accepts the Merrill DP3. Knobs allow the filter ring to be loosened to align the camera with horizontal plane of the macrobox. The macro mirrorbox is essentially treated as a “lens”. It hangs off the Merrill, which has a nice strong snoot. The right image shows the rig in use. The camera is mounted to the Benro Angel tripod with ARCA plate…from this vantage point, the mirrorbox is hidden by the flash power supply at the top. The accessoy lens and ring flash are on the left facing face of the cube. The subject here is a sprig of pinon stuck in an old 120 takeup spool. I’ll convert that image to film. Have some nice macro shots with this rig, just getting used to it.

ALSO: I will look at moving back or using focus stacking to increase DOF so the entire subject is sharp.

Beamsplitter top off Beam splitter in use

Dragon and Rider, Plaza Blanca

by Geoffrey S. Waldo
Dragon and Rider, Plaza Blanca

Dragon and Rider, Plaza Blanca

Alternate view of the Dragon Spine formation at Plaza Blanca, about one hour north of Santa Fe New Mexico by car, the last couple of miles is a dirt road. Process used is the same as for the Dragon Spine image (described in more detail there). The process for digital to film I described in my notes for A28 folio entries. This is the red channel only, spreading the histogram to result in maximum range from black to white (some of the streaks are from the JPG compression when I uploaded this image). The 16 bit Sigma Merrill image (which as 12 bits of useful range, padded to 16 bits) was processed in Corel PSP. This seems to introduce some aliasing in dark quarter-tones, next time I’ll use a 16 bit work flow. Most of the PSP workflow is 16 bit, but histogram manipulation seems to sometimes result in gaps in the color scale. This can be seen in the patterns in the sky, which was pushed down to make it dark. I could also try a red filter, but the red layer of the Merrill sensor is pretty good at that color separation. Perhaps a polarizer! Someone showed a film rig in 2012 (the MF SIG) at my first NSA and it had some square gradient filters, I could likely go that route (I think it was Bob Venezia). Close one eye and you could imagine this is a rider and a dragon, with a puff of smoke. In 3D that illusion is less convincing. Still, the figure to the lower right looks like and earnest fellow with a big nose and his muscular arms at his sides.

Jon in 2017

by Jon Hoggatt

[ed. Jon provided me these thumbnails, but no accompanying text]

Awaiting Release

by John Thurston

FolioA-A30306The Mendenhall is magnificent from a distance. It is spectacular if you can get up close and personal.

The ice has layers and threadsof dirt and sand which were washed down and embedded in the originating snow. As the glacier is pushed down the valley, the face melts away and the embedded dirt, sand, sticks, leaves, and silt are released. You should be suspicious of anyone selling you “crystal clear glacier ice” 🙂

Tripod mounted TL120-1, DR5-processed HP5

 

Beam Me Up

by John Thurston

FolioA-A30305There are often caves in and under the Mendenhall glacier. In the winter, when the lake is frozen and travel is easier, there are often many folks visiting.

On this particular day, I set my camera up and loitered in the corner. The first set of bystanders is always very self conscious and makes explicit efforts to stay away and not “spoil” the shot. By simply loitering with a long cable release (while wearing warm clothes), I out-wait them and they are replaced. The newcomers ignore me as part of the landscape. Then I can trip the shutter, and reach over to advance the film.

Tripod mounted TL120-55. DR5-processed HP5

Vintage Metal

by John Thurston

FolioA-A30304This is an interior, available-light image from the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton. All those aluminum surfaces were just begging to be captured in stereo. The farthest tail looks to me like a B29, but I didn’t take notes about the fighters in the foreground. Can anyone identify them for us?

Available light, tripod mounted Canon 7D. Digital to film transfer done by Gamma Tech in New Mexico. Yes, I know I mounted it backwards 🙁

Learning the Ropes

by John Thurston

FolioA-A30303The Mendenhall glacier is in a National Forest, so commercial exploitation is expected and encouraged. One business here hikes you to the ice. There, you don crampons and helmets before setting off on an ice-trek. Four hours earlier, these folks were probably disembarking from their cruise ship. Now they’re on the glacier and about to practice their fall-arrests.

This is a cool place to live.

Tripod mounted TL120-1, most likely done on Provia 100.

John Grade – Middle Fork at the Renwick “Wonder” Exhibition 2016

by Boris Starosta

middle-fork-302_MFT72

Last year we went to an exhibition of installation artists called “Wonder” at the Renwick Gallery in Washington, DC.  Several artists made very interesting pieces for this show.  Using hundreds of thousands of pieces of reclaimed, old-growth cedar, John Grade built an intricate structure – Middle Fork – based on plaster casts taken of a massive, old-grown hemlock tree in the Cascade Mountains.  At Wonder, I shot cha-cha’s with my Sigma DP1-M and a Sputnik.  Tripods were not allowed, but I was incredibly lucky: each room in the Renwick had a fairly broad chair rail along the wall, wide enough to give good support to the Spud.  The exposures were typically 15 to 30 seconds.

Bazaans A315

by Boris Starosta

Bazaans-A315_MFT72

Another model I’ve been working with since 2016, this one is still in town good for more creativity!  With her I’ve been trying to explore what I call “Challenged Glamour.”  THat’s were I create an image that is nominally an ordinary glamour image, but then I put in some details that disturbs or mocks the normal first impression.  

2015 UCI Worlds from Libby Hill

by Boris Starosta

2015-worlds-709_MFT72

The Union Cyclisme Internationale held its World Championships in Richmond recently, to the great delight of bike racing enthusiasts all over the east coast, but especially central Virginia.  This view is overlooks the crowds on Libby Hill, the next-to-last climb on the about ten miles around loop of city streets that the riders raced (but they raced something like 15 laps).  Ben King, a Charlottesville native, was in the race (he raced in the Tour De France last year as well), and many C-villains were there to cheer him on.

I shot my pictures of the event all at this basic location.  From the very bottom of the hill looking up, and also from halfway up, and then this view looking down.  You can make out the cobbled road snaking down left and right through the crowd.  This was a very difficult surface to ride on – keep in mind the road is ridiculously steep here, and the cobbles reduce traction on your tires.  Coming around these bends, most riders tried to stay in the gutter, which was made of poured concrete – much smoother.  But the gutter was only ten inches wide or so, right next to the crowd, thus also presented its own difficulties.

I shot a twinned set of GoPros from this location also, trying to capture the action in 3d video.  Alas, one of the cameras was malfunctioning (but I didn’t know it – GoPros will sometimes be failing and not let you know….  not good!), so all I got was the “flat” video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55ZElh8q-Ws

You’ll hear a lot of noise in the video which is me fiddling with the Sputnik – I was sharing the same tripod with both cameras.  A twin camera bar held the stereoscopic GoPro enclosure on one side and the Spud on the other.