Photographs by Frank

1 January 2023

Year End Outing

Filed under: Landscapes,Monadnock Region,Winter — Tags: — Frank @ 6:00 PM

On Friday, I headed out to Leadmine Road hoping to make a photo of Mount Monadnock/Silver Lake before the current warm spell removes all of the snow. The skies were okay but the light was miserable. I think that the sun is just too far south this time of year to nicely illuminate the north face of the mountain. I did not make any exposures of the grand view but I’ll keep trying.

I did, however, make a few photos of the rock outcropping near where I like to stand for the distant view and a few of the woods road near where I park the truck. On the way home, I stopped by this hilltop barn in Harrisville that I recently discovered.

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10 December 2022

Searching for Mount Monadnock

Filed under: Landscapes,Monadnock Region,Winter — Tags: — Frank @ 11:00 PM

This afternoon, after lunch, I headed out to see if I could make another photograph of Mount Monadnock from Leadmine Road in Nelson. It was mostly cloudy but the skies were not solid gray. I was hopeful.

I spent about a half hour at this ‘usual’ spot and then decided to see if I could find other views of Mount Monadnock from down near Silver Lake. My search was for naught. Looking at a topo map when I got home, I now realize that the road along the lake shore that I explored was oriented poorly. However, a few minutes with the map provided me with a number of ideas for further expeditions the next time the weather cooperates.

On the way to Silver Lake, I make a brief stop to make photos at Childs Bog. I have passed this view of Mount Mondnock many time but had never stopped because there is no good place to pull of the road. Today, I risked a brief stop and made a few exposures with the camera obscura in the rapid fading light.

Ever the optomist, after my drive along the west side of Silver Lake, I headed to a favorite Monadnock view in Marlborough. However, I did not even bother to get out of the truck as the light was gone.

I turned around and headed home. As I passed by the Chesham train station, I found another tattered flag. I have been collecting photos of flags for a number of years… a long term project, that I have not fully ‘put together’ yet. This flag/barn is not new to me, I photographed it back in 2018. The flag was in perfect condition then.

Arrrgh…. $#&*!$## computers! I just previewed this post and discovered that something as broken in the mechanism for displaying programs. Sorry about that! I’ll try to figure out a fix at soon as I can.

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10 November 2022

Two New Cuprotypes

It has been three weeks since my last post. I figured that I ought to post something… anything. So here goes!!!

November is often a slow month for me photographically. The landscape is dreary gray and brown. The odes are done for the season. However, I have made exposures on four days since my last post. I just hadn’t found time to write here.

One of the ‘distractions’ has been some more cuprotype experiments. However, a couple of days ago, I decided that it is time to stop doing experiments and, instead, to make some ‘art’.

Yesterday evening I printed two negatives using exposures I made about a week ago. This morning I printed these negatives as cuprotypes. My intent was to tone both prints with the iron (II/III) toner that yields an interesting blue-black print. However, I decided that I liked the cemetery gate image as the native brick-red. Thus, I did not tone this print further. One need to be flexible when making art!

These images are both 6×7.5 inches on 8×10 inch paper. The gravestones are on Legion Lenox 100 paper and the gate is on Rives Heavyweight paper.

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15 August 2022

Nothing Precious

Filed under: Alternative Processes,Cuprotype — Tags: — Frank @ 9:00 PM

I spent Saturday experimenting with a newly rediscovered and modified process for making prints.

The Obernetter process, first described in the 1860s, uses iron and copper* to make brick-red images on paper. The pigment produced by this process is, most likely, Hatchett’s Brown (i.e. Cu(II) Ferrocyanide).

Several years ago, this process was updated by Jim Patterson (see: https://www.darkroomdoc.com/post/cuprotype).

A couple of weeks ago, Jan de Young posted on PhoTrio.com the results of an ‘out there’ experiment involving the reuse of used photographic fixer to make a print from a negative. Initially, I (and others) thought that Jan’s process was a variant of Van Dyke brown printing.

One thing lead to another and another fellow, Niranjan Patel (whom I have never met but that I feel I know well from his presence on various alt photo sites) posted to the altphoto email list, his take on these processes. Niranjan made the key discovery that silver (from the spent fixer) plays no role in this process and thus these images are not at all related to Van Dyke brown prints but rather are more accurately described as cuprotypes (i.e. copper-based images).

I won’t bore you with the technical details as I have posted them to the altphoto email discussion cited above. However, here are three examples on three different papers.

All three prints were made using the same chemistry. The reason for the different hues in final prints is unknown as yet. I’ll be trying a few more experiments in an attempt to understand these differences. However, given the vagaries of these alt processes we may never know.

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* Thus the title of this post… nothing precious as in no precious metals (e.g. silver, gold, platinum or palladium)!

30 June 2022

Monhegan Island – Surf

Filed under: Landscapes — Tags: — Frank @ 4:00 PM

Where ocean meets land there is surf. Islands are well endowed with surf watching opportunities. I took advantage of those opportunities and made many, many photos of the surf over the week we visited Monhegan Island.

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28 June 2022

Monhegan Island – The Shoreline

Filed under: Landscapes — Tags: — Frank @ 11:00 PM

During our week on Monhegan, we hiked most of the trails in the conserved ‘wild’ section of the island which is owned and managed by the Monhegan Associates, a private land trust. This is not difficult to do as the island is less than two miles long and less than a mile at its widest. There are a total of eleven miles of trails (trail map as a pdf file).

In doing this we saw essentially all of the shoreline. All of the shore is rocky and most of it is very steep. There are several headlands where the cliffs drop directly into the water.

Again, I made many (too many?) photographs of the shore line from many different vantage points. Here is a baker’s dozen that it hopefully varied enough to hold your attention.

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27 April 2022

Harrisville Details

Yesterday morning I picked up my last load of compost for the season. This final load was destined for Joan’s cousin Suzy who lives near our abode. Since I had no fixed schedule, I meandered vaguely in the direction of home. Of course, I had my camera with me.

As I drove, I noticed the nice texture (at least in some directions) in the clouds and went in search of a foreground for the interesting clouds. I ended up at Halfmoon Pond in Hancock, near the Harrisville border (see the first photo, below). The textured clouds did not last long. The overcast built steadily and it began to drizzle.

Knowing that Joan had to make a trip to Harrisville Designs, and with the lunchtime approaching, I called Joan and arranged to meet her at the General Store for lunch. After lunch Joan headed to the yarn pushers for what she needed and I wandered about the village to make photographs.

Harrisville, NH is a quaint, well preserved old mill town. It is among my favorite places to make photos. Since the weather was not suitable for grand landscapes (think low, thick overcast and intermittent drizzle), I concentrated on the details.

It was almost 5PM before I got the compost delivered.

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9 October 2021

River of No Return/Frank Church Wilderness Raft Trip

Filed under: Autumn,Landscapes,Road Trips — Tags: — Frank @ 10:34 PM

Joan and I returned from a month long road trip yesterday (Friday) afternoon. We left two days after Labor Day and made more-or-less a beeline for Salmon, Idaho.

We made overnight stops in western New York, Ohio, Iowa, Minnesota, Wyoming and central Montana. The last day of the outbound leg, we made a brief stop at Joan’s brothers house in western Montana to drop off our camper before proceeding to meet the folks we would be rafting with in Salmon.

The river we ran is the main stem of the Salmon River. This stretch of the river is also sometimes called the River of No Return* and runs through the Frank Church Wilderness which is the largest wilderness area in the lower forty eight states. We were on the river for six days/five nights. The boats were oared rubber rafts and inflatable kayaks.

Our truck was shuttled to the takeout and after we got off the river, we headed back to Hamilton, MT where we had left the camper. We spent a few days visiting Joan’s brother and sister-in-law before beginning our meander back east. (More on rest of of the trip in subsequent posts.)

Of course, I made a few photographs along the way!

The first batch shown below are photos I made while we were in camp… usually before breakfast or in the late afternoon/early evening before dinner. They were made with my main (dSLR) camera.

The second batch of photos are those made during the day (either at lunch stops or while on the river) using a small fixed (wide angle) lens camera.

As the regulars know, my landscape work in mostly black and white and thus the large majority of these photos are of that ilk.

However, I have snuck a few (three, to be exact) color photos in at the end of the first batch. Not even I would try to photograph a rainbow in black and white!!! As for the last photo (made early on our last morning on the river), the sky was just to luscious in color to convert.

So without further ado…

Batch 1 —

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Batch 2 —

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* This name is not as bad as it sounds. Early settlers (ranchers and miners, in the main) would build boats in Salmon (and up river) and then float the river to their camps. Upon arrival the boats would be dismantled and the (valuable) lumber used for other projects. Thus, is was boats that did not return not people.

13 June 2021

On the Trip Home

Filed under: Landscapes,Monadnock Region,Summer — Tags: , , — Frank @ 10:34 PM

This morning, I headed to Brattleboro to see what was up at the Vermont Center for Photography’s “tag sale’. Not that I need much in the way of ‘photo junk’, but I like to support the VCP and can always find something that will be useful. I came away with a few books, some mats and developing trays.

On the way home, I meandered and made some photographs. I made a few with the camera obscura but mostly, I made infrared (IR) photographs. It was a bright sunny middle of the day… good for IR landscapes and not much else.

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18 May 2021

More IR Landscapes

Filed under: Landscapes,Monadnock Region,Spring — Tags: , — Frank @ 9:30 PM

This morning, while running errands, I stopped at a few of my favorite ‘photo spots’ and made some infrared (IR) photos.

IR is a good way to keep photographers entertained. One can make interesting IR landscapes at mid-day on bright sunny days. That is, at times and under conditions where ‘normal’ photos are generally uninteresting.

These photographs were made in the hour surrounding noon under partly sunny skies. I was thoroughly entertained. I hope you are too!

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