# 5744-50 / nocturnal • landscape • people ~ round and round it goes, where it stops nobody knows

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

BEEN OUT AND ABOUT DOING A VARIETY OF ACTIVITIES. Hikes, night walks, evening dining cruise, tourist cabin searches, to name a few. Also revisited my favorite Adirondack glacial erratic-16 ft tall and fractured. And, I am making a surprising number of pictures.

All of that written, as I sit here making this blog entry, I continue to be rather flummoxed, re: trying to imagine a continuing direction / purpose for this blog.

The fact of the matter is, to be quite honest, I wonder about the viability of the entire photo blog milieu. It seems to me that the only photo blogs with "legs" are those which fester on gear or those that offer up a healthy dose of the cult of personality...2 topics which hold very little interest for me and certainly topics I do not wish to pursue on this blog.

One site that has been holding my interest is Cluadio Turri ~ immagini da un diario. It continues to hold my interest cuz: 1. I like the pictures, and, 2. it is all about pictures (no words). And, as I have repeatedly mentioned, for me, the medium and its apparatus is all about the pictures.

All of that written, I do enjoy reading (and writing) about the medium of photography and its apparatus (aka: apparatus = conventions and practices).

# 5739-43 / civilized ku•nocturnal•a kitchen sink•made from a chair ~ into every life a little rain must fall

rist camp sink ~ (embiggenable) •iPhone

(embiggenable) •iPhone

(embiggenable) •iPhone

(embiggenable) •iPhone

approaching rain ~ made while seated - (embiggenable) •iPhone

DON'T KNOW WHY IT COMES AS SUCH A SURPRISE that here in the Adirondacks in the month of September-where did the summer go?-the daytime temperature only climbs to about 70˚F from a nightime low of 40-50˚F. With a similar 7 day forecast, it appears that autumn color might be arriving on the scene sooner than "normal".

In any event, I continue on my quest to produce nocturnal pictures with the iPhone that, out of the camera, do not look at all like the actual nocturnal scene. On that quest, a few nights ago, I drove the 20 miles to the nearby tiny hamlet of Long Lake. The night sky was overcast with nary a hint of stars to be seen. For my photographic intent that was fine and there were enough man-made scenes to allow me to explore my nocturnal picture making explorations.

That written, I came away with a few pictures which, with subsequent processing, produced the nocturnal look and feel I was after. In a nut shell, that look and feel can best be described as a solitary / isolated illuminated area surrounded by a dark, murky-with subtle detail-area. All in an attempt to capture that mysterious, ill-at-ease, fear of the dark (more or less) that seems to be nearly universal to the human senses.

# 5737-38 ~ excelsior! - onward and downward

killer raccoon ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

view from the porch ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

IN A RECENT ENTRY I MENTIONED THE IDEA of bolting my butt to a chair here at Rist Camp. The idea seems especially attractive after the last 3 months of traveling the country from one ocean to the other including parts in between. Best I call tell, we have probably rack up over 6,000 miles. So, sitting in one place, feet up, seems like a damn good idea.

In any event, the pictures in this entry were made without my getting my butt out of a chair (no bolts employed in the making of these pictures). This activity has made me conscious of the fact that I have made many pictures without assuming the standing position. Which realization, in turn, has caused me to undertake the challenge of making a making pictures while sitting body of work-during my stay at Rist Camp-in response to a regional arts center's recent open call for work for a juried exhibition of regional artists' work.

FYI, the picture making will not be limited to sitting at just Rist Camp. I am certain I will sitting in a wide variety of places...in a canoe, on a beach, on a tour boat, somewhere during a wilderness hike, on a tee box on a golf course, and many other places too numerous to mention. That written, I will try to keep it "honest" inasmuch as I will make a picture after noticing something while sitting as opposed to noticing something and then sitting in order to make a picture of it.

# 5735-36 / civilized ku + landscape ~ back where I belong

rist camp view ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

tourist cabins ~ Tupper Lake - (embiggenable) • iPhone

SETTLING IN AT RIST CAMP FOR THE NEXT 5 WEEKS. JUST ME and the cat for the next couple days.

Cool breezes rustling through the trees, pack of coyotes right behind camp yowlin' and howlin' in the night, loons calling on the lake, and a flock of geese making a ruckus on the lake shore below the camp last evening. This sure ain't the Jersey Shore.

While it is tempting to just bolt my butt to an Adirondack chair on the camp porch, smoke cigars and drink whiskey-bourbon, scotch, and even some Irish and Japanese whiskey-and watch the clouds go by, my picturing intent is to get out and about and find some seldom pictured Adirondack stuff. Some of that out-and-about will be all-day trips inasmuch as the Adirondack Park is larger than the state of Vermont and is the largest park-national or state-east of the Mississippi River. Larger than Yosemite, Everglades, Grand Canyon, and Yellowstone National Parks combined.

One referent that comes to mind is the once ubiquitous tourist cabin clusters (such as seen above). Some have been lovingly preserved / restored while others sit vacant and deteriorating. Many, of course, are long gone. However, unlike the Jersey Shore where the past character of the place is dead and gone, the Adirondack region is dedicated, by intent and zoning decree, to the preservation of its long standing character, both the man-made and the natural world.

FYI, the natural world in the Park is protected by the 125+ year old amendment to the NYS Constitution, the so-called "Forever Wild" amendment. The Park is the largest protected area in the continental U.S. And, much to my ever-lasting pleasure, it is where I live.

# 5505-07 / rist camp•still life•around the house ~ I confess

(embiggenable) • iPhone - 2x Portrait setting

(embiggenable) • µ4/3 - needed a longer tele lens

(embiggenable) • iPhone - ultra wideangle setting

NOW THAT I AM BACK HOME, FIRST THINGS FIRST....on my BW OLDIES ~ LONG AGO / FAR AWAY entry, Thomas Rink asked:

"Did you make the picture with a square aspect ratio camera, or has it been cropped to a square later?"

Interestingly, or strangely enough, dispite my near exclusive adherence to the square format, I have never owned a square format camera. With the exception of a 3-4 year period of personal picture making-as opposed to professional-during which I used an 8x10 view camera (and made prints to that format), I have always cropped to square from various camera's "full-frame" files / negatives. The lone exception to that practice is my iPhone image files which are made using the square format setting.

When using my µ4/3 cameras, the viewing screen (LCD) is set to square. Consequently, when processing RAW files-I always make RAW files with my µ4/3 cameras-my conversion software only displays the cropped image (which I had viewed on my camera's viewing screen). Inasmuch as I NEVER crop the square image file which came out of the camera / iPhone, I consider my pictures to be "full frame" / un-cropped square images.

And, on a directly connected noted, I have always printed-analog and digital-my pictures with a thin black border. In the analog days that meant including part of the film edge. In the digital "darkroom" that means introducing a "manufactured" edge. In either case, the use of a black edge was/is traditionally most often intended to indicate that the picture was un-cropped.

In my case, the use of a black border is two-fold: a.) it does indeed indicate that the picture is uncropped. i.e., exactly as the I saw it on/in my camera / iPhone viewfinder/screen. b.) to reinforce that the picture is, in fact, "cropped" / consciously selected from the surrounding world.

# 5489-92 / rist camp•landscape ~ am I a cow?

it’s that time again ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

SOMETIMES HEAVEN IS A PLACE WHERE nothing ever happens. But, for some reason(s), pictures are made. And then, something is happening here, but you don't know what it is. Do you, Mr. Jones?

My apologies to Mssrs. Dylan and Byrne. However, in fact, there are times when this is exactly how it feels.

#5485-88 / Rist Camp•landscape•civilized ku ~

(embiggenable) • iPhone

blast furnace ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

Hudson River ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

Hudson River ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

TOOK SOME CAMP VISITORS A COUPLE MILES down the road to the site of the remains of an iron ore mine which was built pre-American Civil War. Pictured here is the 5-story blast furnance.

Due to some bad luck, bad timing and an impurity in the iron ore-later discovered to be titanium-the mine was in operation for only 3 years,1854-57. The mine was built along the very upper reaches-1/4 mile from its source-of the Hudson River (2 pictures aboce).