-N- – Page 245 – Ink, Yarn & Beer

Inktober 2019: Days 7-11

I’m really stuck this year – maybe I just don’t have the time or focus or desire? Hard to say. I am behind. I don’t really like some of the pens I have been using for Inktober as they have to be either disposable or impervious to the corrosive effects of the iron gall ink I am using.

Maybe it’s the paper? Some of the paper I am drawing on is really old and yellowed, and not really of artistic quality. I have no idea what it is made of, and is in an sketchbook that is easily 20 years old, and one I never used.

#7: Enchanted

#8: Frail

#9: Swing

#10: Pattern

#11 Snow

Above It All

That’s the Other Half, the Brew Master, Mister Mister, on the walkway.

I really like looking down from a high perch to make a photo, as long as there are high barriers between me and the floor or street below. I don’t know about you, but I so dislike open space up high that I have been known to get stuck on the roof or turn around on a hike that takes me into wide open space and little between me and the drop a mile below. Glass viewing points won’t even get me to step on them. If something adequately encloses me, I can do handle heights, otherwise, panic! That famous photo of workers on a beam, “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper”, eating lunch as they work on the Empire State Building, makes me quite nervous – despite that, it’s an all-time favorite of mine.

As in a Dream

The color version of this is intense – brilliant blue background, orange and white jellies. I like this version over the color one – little details without the distraction of color.

Lunch Time

Taking a snap in a restaurant or cafeteria or coffee bar is always interesting just because people are interesting. Catching people in poses, talking to one another, is an endless source of material. A moment caught – a position – an expression – a movement.

A Touch of Autumn

I just had to put this photo out there today.

I recently acquired a new-to-me Certo 6 camera, It has the legendary Carl Zeiss Tessar 80mm f2.8 lens. The camera and lens date from around 1953 (give or take). I shot this at f2.8 to check out the DOF and sharpness of the lens. I’m amazed. The Ektar 100 came through, too, with beautiful colors.

The Certo 6 is an odd folder in the sense that it has many features that other folding cameras (bellows cameras) of the same time era do not have. Also, because current 120 film is thinner than that of the 50s, there is a potential for overlap of images – which I did not experience – and other quirks that need to be worked out. I really like folders because they force you to slow down and think, as well as consider what you want to see on your film.

Square format is a compositional challenge as well. As this is part of my first roll through the camera, composition was not of any real importance for me, but using the camera was. For some reason I got only 9 out of 12 exposures on the film, but that is something I think I have figured out, and will run another roll of play film through the camera to check out my ideas . . . like I said, ya gotta think sometimes!

More to come.