Raining Under The Ice

Scan001098

This image is made much farther under the ice than Path To The Underworld. It felt, however, much less dangerous and I spent almost half an hour enjoying the space and composing images. A cavern like this this has required months to open and is fairly stable and mature, while the sliver revealed in Path is probably only weeks old and still changing rapidly.

If you have a wide-angle viewer, this would be an excellent time to bring it out. In any case, you will need a bright viewer to reveal the details in the wet floor, but this is my favorite from the set of images I made that day.

This was shot with my TL120-55 on a tripod.

Path To the Underworld

Scan001099Another image shows what’s going on above the ice, but here we’re down under the edge of the ice. We’ve gone back in time far enough that this section of rock has never seen the light of day. The wear-grooves are visible in the rock as are the gravel and sand which the ice used to make the the grooves. Next August, I may be walking on this section of stone, though I doubt I’ll be able to locate it exactly.

Walking around the cliffs above the glacier can make you feel small. But screwing up the nerve to climb down and place a tripod under the glacier makes me feel mortal (and upsets my wife).

Tripod mounted TL120-1

Barbara Over The Glacier

This is the “peninsula” which has figured in many of my recent submissions to the folio. Scan001101As you look at this, the Mendenhall Glacier is receding up the valley to your left and the newly exposed rock surfaces are below you on the right. We’ve crossed the peninsula at the highest point you see and walked down to the edge of the ice. We’ve traveled along the edge of the ice and climbed this cliff to have lunch and try to get some perspective.

The blue-ice caves we’ve visited are down at the edge of the ice. The hikers in the center of the frame are heading back to the trail after visiting the glacier. The forest service visitor’s center is visible on the far side of the lake in the center of the frame. In the winter, I’ll skate or ski from there to the glacier to try to capture images of its presence.

Twenty years ago, every inch of this peninsula was under ice. The spot my wife is sitting would have been about 200′ below the surface. Twenty years from now, these smooth cliffs will be covered in scrub alder and willow and the contours will be hidden forever.

Tripod mounted TL120-1

Under The Ryndam

Scan001097In Tight Lines I referenced one of the changes I’ve seen in in the last ten years, namely the prohibition on getting too close to the ships tied to our public docks. While there is now a plastic fence bolted down the middle of the dock and signs assuring us that maritime safety depends on keeping everyone on the correct side of the fence, there is a remaining bit of sanity. Twenty feet from the fence (and where I stood to create Tight Lines), there is a ramp to the tender-float. When there are too many ships in the harbor to dock them all, they anchor out and bring their passengers in by small boat. The float to which they tie is directly under the bow of first ship moored at the dock. From there, I attempted to capture the immensity of the ships which visit us.

The ship pictured here is the Ryndam. At 101 feet wide, it is almost Panamax-width and could well be the same ship pictured in Tight Lines. Some of the ships which frequent Juneau are a bit wider and taller than Ryndam, but few of them moor at this dock. A skiff with two men in it is provided for scale. The building the background is four stories tall.

Tripod mounted TL120

Maia B 15

My version of a Christmas image?  Well, making it did involve the use of a string of Christmas tree lights. maia_B_15_MFT72_ Maia is a bit soft because she’s just trying to sit still for 30 seconds, while I pull the pile of lights out of her lap.

Fuji Astia, f22, about 30 seconds exposure, tungsten lights, using twin Mamiya 6 w/ 75mm lenses, 3.6″ stereo separation.  Distance to subject about six feet.   Original slide.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Arthouse 2

This is the living room of the Arthouse, a bed and breakfast where I stay whenever I’m in New York (unless they are booked up).  They do no advertising and let their rooms out only to artists that have been personally introduced through friends.  So it’s a bit exclusive, I guess…  There are five rooms of various sizes, and 2.5 baths that the guests share.

Every morning, breakfast is included, and one typically finds guests from overseas, often from Germany or nearby central arthouse_2_MFT72_European countries, Spain, Mexico, or other countries in South America.  Sometimes the guests are so interesting, you hardly need to see the rest of the city.  I stay there once or twice a month, because I have a part-time job driving a coach bus to and from NYC from Charlottesville.  I always bring my bicycle.

Fuji RXP, f16 (?), 1 sec. exposure in available light, using Sputnik on loan from Chuck Holzner. Camera stabilized by holding up against a wall.   Slide in folio is original film.

Bike Works NYC

This is a great little bike shop in SoHo that I discovered years ago while shopping for some esoteric bike parts online.  They have a fabulous web page with lots of fun historical content, plus galleries of unusual bikes they’ve had in their shop (see this page showing some of my bikes).  My city bike, pictured at the lower left of the view (black frame, 20″ wheels), is in their web galleries as well.  This view is of their “showroom” and counter – an area about 10 x 15 ft. bikeworks_NYC_1_MFT72_ To obtain this exposure, I held the camera upside down against the door frame above my head, shimmed a bit with a bicycle cog under the front edge of the camera (I couldn’t bring a tripod on my bike).  I took numerous pictures this way, bracketting my exposures.

Kodak E200, f16, 8s exposure, Sputnik on loan from Chuck Holzner.  original slide.

Michele in 2009

In early spring of 2009 I went on a hike with my beloved Michele.  Weather for Charlottesville had been forecast in the low 50s.  But at Old Rag Mt. things turned out different.  Instead of the partly sunny, mid-40s temperatures we’d expected, by the time we got halfway up the mountain, there was a stiff breeze blowing snow UP the side of the mountain, into our faces, with temperatures below freezing.  At the point shown in the photograph, we were out on some rocky parts of the climb, relatively exposed, wind howling, like a scene out of Krakauer’s “Into Thin Air.”  We’d forgotten our oxygen bottles so we turned around.

michele_2_MFT72_


1/10 sec. exposure on FUJI RAP film in available light at f16 with Sputnik on loan from Chuck Holzner.  This is the original slide.

Blobbed!!!

Blobbed#36 –  Sputnik – don’t remember the film or settings

This was taken at a retreat for high school kids. The “blob” is the inflatable thingy. One person sits at the far end while another person jumps from the platform onto the near end. This propels the person at the far end up in the air. Everybody stopped what they were doing to watch because the girl that is up in the air said it was OK to have the heaviest guy there jump on the blob. I think this one set a record. She emerged from the water crying, but everyone was cheering. She loved the attention more than she hated the pain and did it again 10 minutes later.

“1959”

1959#35 – Sputnik – f/4.5 Provia 400F

This was taken at a play that my stepdaughter was in. Flash photography was not allowed. A couple of months ago on the MF3D Yahoo group, there was a discussion about wide apertures with a Sputnik. It was the same advice that we’ve all heard over the years. Apertures wider than f/16 are useless. This was taken at f/4.5 and even though there is definite softness, I don’t think it’s useless.

Later in the Evening by the Lake

sunsetlakeThis was taken a few minutes later. (See notes from previous image) By this time, the shadows have eaten up a lot of the closer depth cues, (and apparently my ability to see the bubble level in the viewfinder) but there is still some sense of being there. It will be interesting to see how the digital slides compare noise-wise to this one.

According to the 3D World mounting jig, the vertical alignment is either perfect, or off by a bit, depending on which side of the slide is up in the jig. I suspect this means the lines on the jig are off by a hair. Please let me know what you think.

I haven’t been able to do much shooting the past two years, but I hope to make up for lost time on the next loop.  Thanks for your patience, and for sharing some amazing images.

Early Evening by the Lake

eveninglakeI was juggling the Heidoscop, and a couple of digital rigs hoping to get a set of digital->film comparison slides printed up for this loop. Hopefully the digital slides will catch up with the folio before the next stop is over.

In order to reduce the severe headaches I’ve been getting during mounting, I’m experimenting with keeping the edges of the chips lined up in between the two horizontal ridges in the 3D World mounts. This has been a huge help, but in this particular case, the downside was that the horizon is a little bit tilted, and there is a bit of tree branch dangling down at the top that I would have masked w/ the mount if I could have slid and rotated the chips a little bit.

According to the 3D World mounting jig, the vertical alignment is either perfect, or off by a bit, depending on which side of the slide is up in the jig. I suspect this means the lines on the jig are off by a hair. Please let me know what you think.

I haven’t been able to do much shooting the past two years, but I hope to make up for lost time on the next loop.  Thanks for your patience, and for sharing some amazing images.

Oranges

It took several trips into town and a couple of different groves before I managed to get there when they were ripe enough, not already picked, and the sun was still high enough that the rows weren’t casting huge shadows on each other.

Oranges

According to the 3D World mounting jig, the vertical alignment is either perfect, or off by a bit, depending on which side of the slide is up in the jig. I suspect this means the lines on the jig are off by a hair. Please let me know what you think.

I haven’t been able to do much shooting the past two years, but I hope to make up for lost time on the next loop.  Thanks for your patience, and for sharing some amazing images.