tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6155486160246553392024-03-13T05:29:57.940-04:00Steven D. Keirstead PhotographySteven D. Keirsteadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14491463317314374563noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-615548616024655339.post-17714058043525854722017-03-12T17:37:00.003-04:002017-03-13T11:31:32.639-04:00Quarries of New England at the Griffin Museum of Photography<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, Massachusetts is exhibiting selections from my <a href="http://griffinmuseum.org/show/steven-keirstead/" target="_blank">"Quarries of New England"</a> portfolio in the Atelier Gallery, along with <a href="http://griffinmuseum.org/show/koichiro-kurita/" target="_blank">Koichiro Kurita's "</a><span style="background-color: white;"><a href="http://griffinmuseum.org/show/koichiro-kurita/" target="_blank">Voice of the Woods,"</a> April 6 - May 28, 2017. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This is a long term photo project I have been shooting since December 2012, which I began in East Blue Hill Maine, at the G.W.& W.C. Collins Quarry. This happens to be across the road from our house in the coastal village. I'd noticed an old driveway that seemed to go into the dense woods at the site, but wasn't sure if it just went to an abandoned house or something. Then I saw this map of the village from an 1880 atlas, and I realized the road must lead into an abandoned rock quarry. I explored it a couple times with my 645 film camera, but wasn't quite happy with the result. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">By the winter of 2012, I was switching over to digital imaging, and after a snowstorm my husband Lansing and I went for a walk into the old Collins quarry. I took my digital Leica and a 24mm/3.8 lens into the site. I shot this triptych in the most excavated part of the quarry, which isn't very deep, but has some blue-grey rock walls. Some kids apparently put a used shipping pallet up against the wall for target practice (not the best idea, shooting bullets toward a stone wall). I rather liked the result, and showed Lansing the triptych on my computer. He said I should do a project on quarries, as there are a lot of them in coastal Maine, and I agreed it was a terrific idea.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">G. W. & W. C. Collins Quarry, East Blue Hill, Maine, MMXII</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I'd been to some quarries in Maine before; the Settlement Quarry on the Oceanville peninsula of Stonington, and the Mount Waldo Quarry in Frankfort are public parks. In the winter and spring of 2013 I began to research the locations of quarries, and decided not to limit the project to Maine, where I only live some of the year, but I thought I might also include Massachusetts, which had some large quarries in Rockport, Gloucester and Quincy, that would be easy for me to get to. I found great resources online about quarry locations, like the State of <a href="http://www.maine.gov/dacf/mgs/explore/mining/mrds/mrds.htm" target="_blank">Maine's Geological Survey has interactive Google Earth maps showing approximate locations of old mines and quarries</a>, and the website <a href="http://quarriesandbeyond.org/" target="_blank">Quarries and Beyond</a>. The <a href="https://pubs.er.usgs.gov/browse/" target="_blank">US Geological Survey has PDFs</a> you can download of old publications: books by T. Nelson Dale such as "The Granites of Maine," "The Chief Commercial Granites of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island," and others, written in the early 20th Century, were very good for their descriptions of sites and old topographic maps. I found that if I could see the quarry on the aerial photos of Google Earth, there was a good chance the site would be big enough to be worth visiting. I also found that time had obliterated some quarries, as they were overgrown with forests or built over. The Millstone Quarry of Waterford, Connecticut for example, is completely gone now, covered over by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millstone_Nuclear_Power_Plant" target="_blank">the Millstone Nuclear Power Plant</a>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I began photographing in earnest at promising sites, using Nikon D800E and Leica M-P digital cameras. After showing some prints to Frances Jakubek, then the Assistant Director of the Griffin Museum, she encouraged me to look at the "Quarries" book by Edward Burtynsky, which has some impressive single image shots of quarries in Vermont. I decided to expand the scope of my project to all six New England states. By the end of 2016, I had made at least a couple good multi-image works documenting quarries in each state. Here are a six examples:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Maine:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">High Isle Quarry, Muscle Ridge Islands, Maine, MMXIV</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Blood Ledge Quarry, Gloucester, Massachusetts, MMXVI</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Fitzwilliam Webb Quarry, Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire, MMXIV</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Wetmore & Morse Quarry, South Barre, Vermont, MMXIV</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Harris Quarry, Lime Rock, Lincoln, Rhode Island, MMXVI</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Specialty Minerals Limestone Quarry, Canaan, Connecticut, MMXVI</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 18px;"><br /></span>Steven D. Keirsteadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14491463317314374563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-615548616024655339.post-27964433387121417322016-09-12T23:41:00.000-04:002016-09-13T00:29:48.531-04:00<h2>
<b><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Night Becomes Us at the Art Complex Museum, Duxbury, MA </span></b></h2>
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<b><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">September 18, 2016 - January 15, 2016</span></b></h3>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Opening Reception: Sunday, September 18, 1:30-3:30pm,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">189 Alden Street, Duxbury, MA 02331 </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I'll be showing seven night photography triptychs from a portfolio I'm calling "A Night in the Alleyway," as a participant in the group show of the Boston Night Photographers. These images were all shot in the winter and spring of 2016, while I was taking night photo workshops with Lance Keimig, night photography guru and teacher extraordinaire. I shot a lot of images that didn't make it into the portfolio in this time period, because the subjects and locations were too dissimilar, but I did begin to gravitate toward funky streets and alleys in old neighborhoods in Boston, like the South End, The North End, and Bay Village. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Thus a theme emerged and I selected seven compositions for this show from that work, with curatorial help from Jürgen Lorbert and Elizabeth Ryan, the organizers of the Greater Boston Night Photographers Meet Up Group, a kind of club for area night photography enthusiasts.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiahMaUwewbQX-as6ke5LS897QXDVAmoDOoY2N6ka49F978pIsiVra72Mbm-K3mfllBvTMK2q9YLRW5vn-dUpIwg5KQ1anlS3OGyE_6A9X2BDwAy5eJhTX2p1Fcx79eEU-ykY-Wj9R2idg/s1600/Dingley-Place_-Bay-Village_-Boston_-Massachusetts_-MMXVI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiahMaUwewbQX-as6ke5LS897QXDVAmoDOoY2N6ka49F978pIsiVra72Mbm-K3mfllBvTMK2q9YLRW5vn-dUpIwg5KQ1anlS3OGyE_6A9X2BDwAy5eJhTX2p1Fcx79eEU-ykY-Wj9R2idg/s640/Dingley-Place_-Bay-Village_-Boston_-Massachusetts_-MMXVI.jpg" width="640" /></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Dingley Place, Bay Village, Boston, Massachusetts, MMXVI</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It's amazing how night photography can transform a banal location like a city alley into something captivatingly surreal. The key thing that adds visual interest is artificial light, and the many color casts that different kinds of artificial light give off.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTuwCltomwDyQ93taX2ZDlmiNwf_PTOIFc7XsNH_uzhQlk9mRlKhwCrDx3d1Tsg8TWdJNJWZUzcqTgXJijvl4nF6lw4ufTzdKkFROC4g0v32oBx6_fVJfkDLhkAplU_uHWACFY3_-pjJ0/s1600/Wellington-Street-Alleyway_-Boston_-Massachusetts_-MMXVI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTuwCltomwDyQ93taX2ZDlmiNwf_PTOIFc7XsNH_uzhQlk9mRlKhwCrDx3d1Tsg8TWdJNJWZUzcqTgXJijvl4nF6lw4ufTzdKkFROC4g0v32oBx6_fVJfkDLhkAplU_uHWACFY3_-pjJ0/s640/Wellington-Street-Alleyway_-Boston_-Massachusetts_-MMXVI.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The extreme contrast of urban nights is difficult to record in any photographic medium. For a long time, low to mid speed color negative film was the best material to use for night photography because it was very forgiving of overexposure. But color negative films have now been surpassed by digital camera sensors, which are capable of capturing an even longer tonal scale from black to white. And by using the photographic computing technique called HDR or High Dynamic Range imaging, you can extend the sensitivity of a digital camera even further. HDR uses two or more images of different exposure time of the same scene shot with a tripod mounted camera, and combines the well exposed portions of each image into a final image that doesn't have large areas of impenetrable black shadows, and doesn't suffer from blown-out, all-white highlights where light sources are in the scene.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpM7KyizYasCAiAby_w_NeZVQCbrEl3oEluzDKqteV4T2qip3WZUIRFIrXKyWsY8PvZhjtZCNdfSLevC_OSturA9EknaKodHhPFIhr929NkMTVt9b-8wOXd-Tzs60gzUSqLr_om6u9gHI/s1600/Newbury-Street-Hynes-MBTA-Station-Alleyway_-Massachusetts_-MMXVI.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpM7KyizYasCAiAby_w_NeZVQCbrEl3oEluzDKqteV4T2qip3WZUIRFIrXKyWsY8PvZhjtZCNdfSLevC_OSturA9EknaKodHhPFIhr929NkMTVt9b-8wOXd-Tzs60gzUSqLr_om6u9gHI/s640/Newbury-Street-Hynes-MBTA-Station-Alleyway_-Massachusetts_-MMXVI.jpg" width="640" /></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Newbury Street Hynes MBTA Station Alleyway, Massachusetts, MMXVI</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">When doing HDR, at night a photographer has to decide how many images will need to be taken to be combined later, and what the range of time difference between each exposure will be. I experimented a bit with single frame HDR photos before starting to apply the process to triptychs. I tried both my Nikon D800E and my Leica M-P digital cameras, and found that I liked the results from the Leica slightly better for urban subjects. The color rendition seemed to give me what I wanted to portray the scenes in print and on the computer screen, and the more straightforward traditional shutter speed dial operation of the Leica camera makes setup and shooting easier than the menu and multifunction control of the Nikon D800E. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1rwprBZcVD1ZfZ-Mk-kr1erR0Gg2_2geCLJxcgxDv8KZwcuFCOSKRJdI_tRS8-ig_tkr2SFIdYz0eWiIX0mIQfcdlzgdcpjUeytKKDt2phN1fG4cUgAUUklq7mKX31C-OjHm_YH5UG0A/s1600/Newbury-Street-Hynes-MBTA-Station-Alleyway_-Massachusetts_-MMXVI-2.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1rwprBZcVD1ZfZ-Mk-kr1erR0Gg2_2geCLJxcgxDv8KZwcuFCOSKRJdI_tRS8-ig_tkr2SFIdYz0eWiIX0mIQfcdlzgdcpjUeytKKDt2phN1fG4cUgAUUklq7mKX31C-OjHm_YH5UG0A/s640/Newbury-Street-Hynes-MBTA-Station-Alleyway_-Massachusetts_-MMXVI-2.jpg" width="640" /></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Newbury Street Alleyway, Massachusetts, MMXVI</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">All of the triptychs in the show were done with the Leica M-P. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I like using the electronic viewfinder accessory of the Leica, despite the fact that many photographers think it doesn't have a high enough resolution for focusing. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Focusing with the Leica's rangefinder is pretty easy even in dark alleys, so I used the EVF only for composing, because it's</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> easier to see than the rear screen live view of either camera due to the adjustable diopter I can preview a scene clearly even with my combination of mild myopia and mild presbyopia. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXnHQgptoPMgfvYnaFMsdHoKFinWdiJ1kfimTtIogcFEfKDQFtRSfUI3PLHzTiRaadhRZyCwHXAQIEq3TplIibfgtTYU5ud7OqmIYdTj3YSRJN4O2IkDa3kmWa4SeWJVzZ10nRUsFvoaA/s1600/Charter-Street-Park_-North-End_-Boston_-Massachusetts_-MMXVI.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXnHQgptoPMgfvYnaFMsdHoKFinWdiJ1kfimTtIogcFEfKDQFtRSfUI3PLHzTiRaadhRZyCwHXAQIEq3TplIibfgtTYU5ud7OqmIYdTj3YSRJN4O2IkDa3kmWa4SeWJVzZ10nRUsFvoaA/s640/Charter-Street-Park_-North-End_-Boston_-Massachusetts_-MMXVI.jpg" width="640" /></a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Except for the last composition of Charter Street Park, all of the triptychs used HDR combining three exposures for each of the three frames of the final composition, thus a total of nine exposures went into making each image. (The Charter Street Park image only used HDR for the left panel, and the other two panels were each straight, single images.) Typical exposures for each HDR were 1, 3, and 8 seconds, ISO 200, and aperture f/5.6 or f/8. Most of the images were shot with a Zeiss 35mm/1.4 Distagon ZM, though a couple were done with a Leica 24mm/3.8 Elmar ASPH M lens.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I processed the raw DNG files in Adobe Lightroom CC 2015, and used the HDR feature in Lightroom to process them further. After matching the luminance of the three HDR panels for a triptych in Lightroom, I took the images into Adobe Photoshop CC 2015, and composited the panels into a triptych template with black frame spacers and borders. I also had to fix nasty artifacts of the HDR process in Photoshop too. Sometimes Lightroom gets confused by moving objects, like the flags in the Petrigno Court scene at the top, and it made a pig's breakfast of some of those American flags. I fixed that by choosing the best looking flag from the three images and masking it back into the scene to cover the mess. Finally I sent the finished composite triptychs back to Lightroom for printing, as it's easier to do final print tweaking in Lightroom than it is in Photoshop. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Prints were done using Canson Infinity Photosatin RC paper Epson Stylus Pro 3880 printers at the New England School of Photography in Boston. Thanks to Sue Anne Hodges, Nick Johnson, Lance Keimig, and the staff at NESOP for their invaluable technical and aesthetic advice, and their enthusiastic encouragement.</span></span>Steven D. Keirsteadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14491463317314374563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-615548616024655339.post-84235595888359820192015-05-06T16:40:00.002-04:002015-05-06T17:08:45.815-04:00June 2015 Exhibit at Blue Hill Public Library <h2>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Quarries Of New England</span></h2>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A Photo Exhibit at Blue Hill Public Library</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">June 1-26, 2015, I will be showing new work <a href="http://www.bluehill.lib.me.us/" target="_blank">at the Blue Hill Public Library</a> in Blue Hill, Maine. The prints will be from my first all-digital series, "Quarries of New England," an artistic/documentary exploration of mainly abandoned rock quarries in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Framed prints will be for sale and 50% of the sale price will go to the library to benefit their general funds. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I'll host a reception on June 5, 2015 from 5-7pm at the library, and I''l be serving non alcoholic beverages and snacks. I hope to have time to bake some focaccia bread, and I plan to have some cheeses, nuts, and olives too. I'll give a short gallery talk about 6pm.</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/steven_keirstead/15352080250" title="Whetmore & Morse Quarry, Graniteville, Barre, Vermont, MMXIV by Steven Keirstead, on Flickr"><img alt="Whetmore & Morse Quarry, Graniteville, Barre, Vermont, MMXIV" height="198" src="https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5597/15352080250_38839d96f5_c.jpg" width="400" /></a>Steven D. Keirsteadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14491463317314374563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-615548616024655339.post-59433572171533607652011-06-02T13:36:00.000-04:002015-05-06T16:48:59.354-04:00Diptychs in Fresh Works - Five<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;">Despite having visited the Blue Hill area for many years, I had not explored Kingdom Road until 2010. One August morning I thought I would drive out before breakfast to see what was photogenic there. It was not long before I came upon this red tractor and green hay-bailer sitting out in a freshly cut hayfield. Not wanting to wander into the field uninvited, I mounted a 150mm telephoto on my Pentax 645n for this diptych, which would magnify the images I wanted to make. I shot the scene a few different ways, and like this pair the best. I shot the tractor image then walked a few feet to the right for the second image of the trailer. If you look at the background you will see some repetition of the plants and trees. Telephoto lenses have the property of low depth of field, which makes things in front of or behind the main subject blurred by being out of focus, which can be a disadvantage or can make the main subject of a photo pop out at the viewer. The advantage of this approach was to get the farm equipment in profile and sharp, while the background and foreground were softened, but still recognizable.</span></span></span></div>
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Steven D. Keirsteadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14491463317314374563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-615548616024655339.post-89433292750132978172011-06-02T13:32:00.000-04:002015-05-06T16:49:22.276-04:00Diptychs in Fresh Works - Four<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Sheep May Safely Graze, Greenstory Farm, East Blue Hill, Maine, MMX</span></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Not far from our new house in East Blue Hill, Maine is Jay Carter Road, a long dirt track leading to several houses and farms along the West side of McHeard Stream. One farm a short distance down the road is called Greenstory, and they raise sheep. I shot this small flock one morning, trying different lenses and two different cameras, but the sheep became disinterested in me rather quickly. As a result, the early diptychs of these ovines were much better because the sheep were still looking on me with some curiosity, perhaps expecting a treat. I took the start of my title from the J.S. Bach cantata.</span></span></span></div>
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Steven D. Keirsteadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14491463317314374563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-615548616024655339.post-18322347131316878532011-06-02T13:28:00.003-04:002023-09-17T18:00:12.945-04:00Diptychs in Fresh Works - Three<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana, sans-serif" style="background-color: white;">Rocks, Ocean Path, Acadia National Park, Maine, MMVIII</span></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana, sans-serif" style="background-color: white;">Acadia National Park’s spectacular views are sometimes obscured by thick fog in summer. Fog can have a very interesting effect on a subject for the open minded artist, generating a softly defined negative space. A spectacular example in Japanese Art is a set of folding screens by Hasegawa Tōhaku (1539-1610) depicting a pine forest in fog. Late in his life while living in a Buddhist monastery, Tōhaku portrayed these pine trees in washes of sumi ink rapidly fading from black to grey, with much of the paper left totally white. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Hasegawa Tōhaku, </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Pine Trees in Fog <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">(松林図)</span></span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span">, 16th Century, Momoyama Period, Ink on Paper, left hand screen of pair of byōbu folding screens, </span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Tōkyō National Museum (東京国立博物館).</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Japan.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana, sans-serif" style="background-color: white;">In photography, fog results in an image emphasizing the foreground or the main subject and removes much detail from the background that might compete with the main subject in a fair weather photo. I shot these two pictures near the end of a hike with Lansing Wagner, as we walked down the Ocean Path down the eastern shore of Acadia the fog closed in, and the visible world became more intimate. We came upon a very cracked section of the pink granite that is the bedrock of Mount Desert Island, and the cracks seemed to converge toward one point. I tried to emphasize this convergence with the 45mm wide angle lens on my Bronica RF645, which exaggerated the perspective, and by splitting the composition into two frames I hoped to draw the viewer’s eyes in interesting ways into and around the composition. The bluish-grey lichens and green foliage provided subtle colors to contrast with the pink granite rocks in the print.</span></span></span></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWBuAW0fVhnCN_nLYbDp4gUUZLkU-QluzHof0EL-40PMjxTNJ0yjE3uZldR8vRTgwWGsV_aKTJcUZgHF6AwDYq3fN9JTKOSSzMfIWeRA52F0qmvPIK2tM7PFMYKvnnFUEVEaqjCMcVU651vsdxqPsoo2VCsXtbLvJoPxu_AzGcUkoOiCLLUymK540hKlY/s1024/Rocks,%20Ocean%20Path,%20Acadia%20National%20Park,%20Maine%20MMVIII-Rocks2008-editionb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Film Diptych" border="0" data-original-height="689" data-original-width="1024" height="430" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWBuAW0fVhnCN_nLYbDp4gUUZLkU-QluzHof0EL-40PMjxTNJ0yjE3uZldR8vRTgwWGsV_aKTJcUZgHF6AwDYq3fN9JTKOSSzMfIWeRA52F0qmvPIK2tM7PFMYKvnnFUEVEaqjCMcVU651vsdxqPsoo2VCsXtbLvJoPxu_AzGcUkoOiCLLUymK540hKlY/w640-h430/Rocks,%20Ocean%20Path,%20Acadia%20National%20Park,%20Maine%20MMVIII-Rocks2008-editionb.jpg" title="Rocks, Ocean Path, Acadia National Park, Maine, MMVIII" width="640" /></a></div><br /><br /></div>
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Steven D. Keirsteadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14491463317314374563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-615548616024655339.post-70034532251270538712011-06-02T13:25:00.001-04:002023-09-17T20:46:42.712-04:00Diptychs in Fresh Works - Two<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;">Radar House, Radar Road, Sedgwick, Maine, MMVII</span></span></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;">I photographed this odd, blocky building without knowing what it was, and as I did so I was thinking about how to make the simple structure less banal. While the lushly growing lupines and other plants, the peeling yellow paint and rusting metal doors framed a compelling subject, I wanted to approach it creatively. I was not content to simply document it. So I decided to photograph this diptych shooting the building from the two corners, which would give a glimpse of both sides of the building, along with the front. In the back of my mind I was thinking of David Hockney’s photocollage of a desk, a more complex composition that shows the top, sides and front of the furniture.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;">I was later told this was a World War II radio house for a radar installation, but recently I learned this is not quite right. Built in the postwar, the 1950s, this was the Sedgwick Z-6BB Radar station, that had an unmanned radar tower and equipment to transmit data to Charleston Air Force Station in Charleston, Maine. The Sedgwick station was a Bendix model AN/FPS-14 radar, placed to fill in gaps in radar coverage from the larger installation at Charleston.</span></span></span></span></div>
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Steven D. Keirsteadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14491463317314374563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-615548616024655339.post-58352826884683854342011-06-02T13:09:00.000-04:002015-05-06T16:50:53.569-04:00Diptychs in the Fresh Works exhibit at the first Flash Forward Festival Boston - One<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I thought I would post descriptions and information of each of my five diptychs that curator Paula Tognarelli picked to put in the Fresh Works show on view June 2-5, 2011 at the </span><a href="http://www.flashforwardfestival.com/events"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Flash Forward Festival Boston</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. </span></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Burnt Blueberry Field, Radar Road, Sedgwick, Maine, MMVIII</span></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Radar Road blueberry fields in Sedgwick, Maine are among my favorite places in all the world. Carpeted with the low-bush, wild blueberry plants native to the northern parts of the US and Canada, with small patches of other plants, these fields explode with life. The plants change during the growing season, from the blossoms of spring to the concentrated blue-black fruit ripening in August to the reddening leaves of autumn. But these fields would rapidly go to shrubs and trees in climactic succession without the intervention of humans, who value blueberries above a forest. To keep unwanted plants at bay, the common practice in Maine is to burn the fields every few years, usually after harvest. This kills off many susceptible weeds, but not the blueberry plants, whose roots tolerate the heat and then grow again the next year.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I shot this diptych one cool spring the year after this particular field was burned. While the ground was still blackened with soot, the new blueberry plant growth was quite red, while ferns and grasses that also survived the previous fall’s burning sprang forth in green. While this appears surreal, it is actually a faithful recoding to film of what was there. No digital manipulation is done to my prints of this scene, I only adjust the brightness of the sky buy burning the upper part of the image to get the clouds to show up on the paper.</span></span></span></div>
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Steven D. Keirsteadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14491463317314374563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-615548616024655339.post-70127350516989472112010-03-21T10:05:00.014-04:002015-05-06T18:43:15.000-04:00Opening of Frank Rodick’s “Labyrinth of Desire” and gallery talk with Katherine Ware<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Frank Rodick, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Love</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span">, 2007, from the series </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Faithless Grottoes</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span">, Digital Type C Print, 36 x 96 inches / 91.4 x 243.8 cm</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;">One of the most intellectually stimulating events of FotoFest 2010 was the opening of Canadian photographic artist Frank Rodick retrospective “Labyrinth of Desire,” curated by Katherine Ware at Houston’s Colton and Farb Gallery. I was not sure what to expect, having only seen one image before choosing to go to the opening, which was to feature a dialog between the photographer and curator.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;">Coming into the gallery, I could not help but be impressed by the large colorful images of Rodick’s Faithless Grottoes series. These are big, graphic images, either printed on very large paper or composed of several separately framed prints. The subject matter is people, but not portraiture. The original images are sometimes derived from photographing pornography on a TV screen, the faces of people in the throes of ecstasy, sometimes using models who are bound and gagged. Rodick then heavily manipulates the images digitally, distorting facial features, enlarging teeth or lips, blurring features and adding specks and noise to the images, artfully playing with them. This series is printed in color, but a nearly monochromatic color. Each print is boldly black and blue or black and red, cold or hot in tone. The result is painterly, abstracted from visual reality, yet still tied to it and the source of the picture remains obviously photographic. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;">To tell the truth, I found these big prints nightmarish and overwhelmingly creepy. Like pictures of Jesus bleeding on the cross, there is a sadomasochistic quality to Rodick’s Grottoes series that I gives me a hard time upon seeing the pictures. I’m sure some people have a different reaction, and there is no denying the power and quality of the work. Living with one of these pieces would be too depressing, and this is coming from someone who admires Japanese war triptych prints from the Meiji period and their stylized violence. Rodick’s photos are not for me.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Frank Rodick, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Untitled No. 34</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span">, 1995</span><span class="Apple-style-span">, Gelatin Silver Print, 8.5 x 13.5 inches / 21.6 x 34.3 cm</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Some of the other series by the artist were much more accessible to me. In the rooms featuring the early street photos where Frank deliberately used slow shutter speeds to blur walking people to the soft, cropped nudes of his </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Sub Rosa</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span"> series that followed it, I found my self relaxing a bit from the tension induced by the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Grottoes</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span"> series. Even the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Arena</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span"> series, which uses many of the same images as </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Grottoes</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span"> is less devastating, because the prints are much smaller and the color pallet more muted. These Arena pictures are more monochromatic, like toned black and white prints. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Frank Rodick, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Sub Rosa No. 5</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span">, 1995</span><span class="Apple-style-span">, Gelatin Silver Print, 16.25 x 12.75 inches / 41.3 x 32.4 cm</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Finally there was Rodick’s newest work, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Revisitations</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span">, small color triptychs of oval prints bezel set and sumptuously mounted in velvet lined wooden boxes, almost like old Daguerreotypes. We were encouraged to put on cotton gloves and hold these pictures, a more intimate experience. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Revisitations</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span"> seemed more personal and nostalgic for Rodick, and one piece included a postmortem photo of his father.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;">Frank Rodick, Three Studies for a Mouth (Explorations in statecraft, love, and the passing of woes), 2010, Type C Print mounted in wooden case, 4 x 8 ¾ inches / 10.1x 22 cm </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;">After I had been looking around a few minutes, visitors were encouraged to sit for the gallery talk, which took the form of an introduction by Katherine Ware, photography curator of the New Mexico Museum of Art, followed by an interview and discussion of Rodick’s work. Ware told how she had met Rodick at FotoFest 2008 and decided to help him put together this mid-career retrospective. Then Ware noted how photography is very good at reproducing the surface appearance of things, while painting can more easily explore and portray the feelings of the artist and asked “How do you get below the surface with photography?”</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;">Rodick replied that he is much more interested in “bending the media” away from capturing the surface of appearances, that he is no longer interested in making straight or documentary photography. He said he likes to manipulate his photos to give them tension. And, surprisingly for someone who is obviously a master of digital manipulation, Rodick likes to take advantage of chance occurrences, to make a final product that he did not plan or expect to make.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;">Ware asked Rodick why he often works now in multi-image formats, and he said he likes the way two or more images can relate to each other and build a kind of narrative, a miniature movie in the viewers imagination. This is something I wholly understand. I also find multi image works fascinating. Even the simplest sort of diptych a side by side scene, like the ones I often make, develops a sort of story about something, even if it just is about taking the two photos. Ware asked if Rodick expected the audience for his work to know the language of these narratives, and he replied “the short answer is yes and no.” The gallery audience laughed, and Rodick went on to say that while some elements of the narratives he constructs are intentional, every person is going to have a different reaction. To me Rodick’s multi-image works suggest strange disturbing stories, ones of bondage, sadomasochistic sex and violence, even kidnapping and torture.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;">Rodick hopes that his images rather than showing literal visual truth will be emotionally authentic, to feel true. And Katherine Ware agreed speaking of how these images reminded her of how she sometimes sees things in dreams and remembrances in the back of her head. Rodick knows there will be various reactions to the pictures, from some people finding them the sexiest things they have ever seen to others finding them horrific. He related an anecdote of one collector who told him the images in Faithless Grottoes were very powerful and emotional. For a moment he was excited hoping she would buy some of his work, thinking “how many would you like?” But then she continued, saying “And I can’t bear to look at them,” and he was devastated. And he told on the other hand of receiving some very frank sexual propositions in emails from people who have seen his work and are turned on by it.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Francis Bacon (1909-1992), </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Figure with Meat</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"> , 1954, Oil on Canvas, 51 1/8 x 48 inches / 129.9 x 121.9 cm </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Not surprisingly Ware asked about Rodick’s admiration of British painter Francis Bacon, and he confirmed he is a fan of Bacon’s painting which similarly distorts human faces and forms and often features sadomasochistic elements. I think the influence can clearly be seen in the enlarged teeth of several of Rodick’s pictures like </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Decrement (All flesh / 63 Chambers)</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span"> which echoes Bacon’s </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Figure with Meat, </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span">in which the figure is a distortion of a painting by Velasquez of </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Pope Innocent X</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span">.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Frank Rodick, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Decrement (All flesh / 63 chambers)</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span">, 2010, Array of nine Type C Prints, each 26 x 20 inches / 66 x 50.8 cm </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;">At the end, Ware and Rodick opened the floor for questions from the audience. No one seemed ready to start, so like a good teachers pet I jumped in first with a couple questions. I’m a pretty shy guy around new people, but asking questions is something I always am able to do. I was curious as to whether or not Rodick kept all the images that failed to satisfy him, and he said it’s becomes much easier with everything becoming digital, so he does keep his failures stored on his computer now, though he did not when he was working in the darkroom earlier in his career. Katherine Ware pointed out that sometimes artists are not he best people to evaluate whether a particular piece they made is a failure or a success, so it is good that it has become easier for photographers to keep all their work.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;">Afterward, Ware and Rodic came up to me and thanked me for bresking the ice on the Q & A session. I had a nice chat with Ware on Maine and the outdoors, which she loves too.</span></span></span></div>
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Steven D. Keirsteadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14491463317314374563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-615548616024655339.post-69941952119543805532010-03-19T20:03:00.003-04:002015-05-06T16:51:51.725-04:00Impressions of FotoFest 2010<div style="font: 12.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;">This FotoFest was great fun for me as an artist. I finally got my recent diptych work into a selective exhibition that was part of a major festival of photography. True, I was helped by knowing the curator, Photography Professor Geoff Winningham, having been his student in my BA and BFA years at Rice, and by keeping in touch with him over the years, sending him prints and the first edition of my self-published book. I think my artistic work has been getting stronger since 2007, and it’s gratifying to have someone I admire think so too. We had a good opening crowd, and I hope that many more people will make the trip to see the exhibit, which also features eleven other Rice alum’s still photos and a cool video installation by Lina Dib, a current anthropology Ph.D. student at Rice.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;">Of course, I went to several other FotoFest exhibitions around the city, and most were quite good, even if I didn’t like everything on display. I definitely appreciate color documentary and landscape photography more than heavily manipulate “artsy” work, because that is what I myself like to make. I perhaps suffer a bit from the “Renaissance Disease” Professor Bill Camfield used to describe in my art history classes at Rice, wanting a picture to be clearly about its subject in a representational way. But at least I feel like I am long over my Ansel Adams phase of admiring overdramatic landscapes purged of all humanity.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;">Best of all was getting to catch up with my former photo professors from Rice, Geoff Winningham and Peter T. Brown, to hear what they have been doing and to get their comments on a little portfolio of 8x10” prints I toted around. It’s good to see they are both still in good health, though Geoff walks with a bit of a limp from being gored by a bull in Mexico and Peter ha put on some weight. Both were very encouraging about my diptychs, though as Geoff pointed out, the simple idea of dividing a scene into two images produces picture that seems far more interesting than it ought to be. Something definitely goes on different in a viewers’ neurology when a person looks at a single image of something than when the same scene is divided in two. I think it forces your brain to work at reconstructing the visual experience of being the photographer to some greater extent than a single picture does.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;">I very much enjoyed the gallery talk I went to see with curator Katherine Ware interviewing Frank Rodick and discussing the arc of his photographic work at Colton & Farb Gallery. It wasn’t so much about liking the artist’s work, which I find too unsettling to enjoy, as it was to listen to how the work evolved and how the Frank works. To be sure his process is not much like mine, but it was fascinating to here his thoughts. I’ll go into more detail in another post.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;">Also terrific was going to Fotofest’s Open Portfolio night on Sunday, March 14th and meeting other photographers who are more or less peers of mine, the emerging or reemerging photographers, looking for a little recognition that they are doing important pictures. I saw what I thought was some of the best and worst work while overlooking the tables in the hall that night. Literally everything from baby portraits and wedding pictures to heavily digitally manipulated pretentious art was there, and everything in between. Again I gravitated to certain peoples’ documentary work, but quickly walked on past many others’ stuff. In the process I made some new friends and even met a fellow photographer from Boston, Eva Timothy, and a friend of a friend Lynn Saville, a night photographer who also knows Boston’s nocturnal imaging guru Lance Keimig.</span></span></span></div>
Steven D. Keirsteadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14491463317314374563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-615548616024655339.post-11691614848000367062010-02-11T19:49:00.003-05:002015-05-06T17:03:52.435-04:00Heading for Houston FotoFest 2010<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/steven_keirstead/17187261697" style="background-color: white;" title="Harvard OEB 10 Field Trip to Lovells Island, Boston Harbor, Massachusetts, 2008 by Steven Keirstead, on Flickr"><img alt="Harvard OEB 10 Field Trip to Lovells Island, Boston Harbor, Massachusetts, 2008" height="263" src="https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8751/17187261697_784afd34e3.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Houston Fotofest 2010 Biennial, It’s coming up and I’m getting excited! I’m part of a group show at my alma mater Rice University, showcasing 11 students who studied photography over the past 40 years since the founding of the Rice Media Center. I’ve kept in touch with Geoff Winningham, who has been teaching Photography at the Media Center from the beginning, and Geoff invited me to this celebratory show, </span></span><a href="http://events.rice.edu/index.cfm?EventRecord=12810"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Light and Vision 2</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">. I’m flying down for the opening reception on March 12, which is the first plane trip I’ve taken since my husband Lansing injured his back in 2005.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The trip promises to be interesting and fulfilling. Aside from the opening, I’m planning on taking in many of the other photography exhibits around town. During FotoFest, most Houston galleries and museums will be having special photography shows featuring the theme of Contemporary American Photography. I wanted to sign up for some formal portfolio reviews, but unfortunately they were all booked for the only review day that I’ll be in Houston. So I’m going to tote around a portfolio of diptych prints and try to show them informally to gallery owners who are interested, and take them to the </span></span><a href="http://www.fotofest.org/biennial2010/calendar/"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Open Portfolio Night on March 14th</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">.</span></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It’s also ging to be cool to visit some of my professors from 20 years ago, especially Geoff, who is letting me stay at his house, and <a href="http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2008/01/west-of-last-ch.html">Peter T. Brown</a>, who used to teach photography at Rice but is now working on his terrific color landscape photography. I also hope to see a few of my Rice class mates who still live in the city. One of my closest Rice roommates was Andreas Hablutzel, also an avid photographer. Andy is going to FotoFest too, but unfortunately at the end of the festival, so we won’t get to meet up.</span></span>Steven D. Keirsteadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14491463317314374563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-615548616024655339.post-92095351013079832522009-10-18T11:34:00.036-04:002023-09-17T20:59:48.260-04:00Occurrence at Otter Cliffs<div style="text-align: justify;"><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6FSp3f0Pbbz2Dui6O3viXLgyTqaGUKahI49IZr_Kl5fbnkTr4AkJpUH_k1SgHBe2uI-ciw3RhX1nSOXhq6zG1_5ir_eRsnIdBzLvOMj4N0BxxdEYT7sp-kapVRVnQZCEx0i4fsh2IllnTthWGSMxShwfFj5u7DV2zz5wCt1sfCivze-q_IYgR-T6c0kU/s1024/Otter%20Cliffs,%20Acadia%20National%20Park,%20Maine,%20MMVII-OtterCliffsDeNewtoned-v2010.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="663" data-original-width="1024" height="414" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6FSp3f0Pbbz2Dui6O3viXLgyTqaGUKahI49IZr_Kl5fbnkTr4AkJpUH_k1SgHBe2uI-ciw3RhX1nSOXhq6zG1_5ir_eRsnIdBzLvOMj4N0BxxdEYT7sp-kapVRVnQZCEx0i4fsh2IllnTthWGSMxShwfFj5u7DV2zz5wCt1sfCivze-q_IYgR-T6c0kU/w640-h414/Otter%20Cliffs,%20Acadia%20National%20Park,%20Maine,%20MMVII-OtterCliffsDeNewtoned-v2010.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Otter Cliffs, Acadia National Park, Maine, MMVII</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">This is a view from the southern end of the Ocean Path Trail in Acadia National Park, a trail that is quite easy walking. Walking along it is more like strolling down a sidewalk than taking a hike, though it is mostly paved with fine gravel, not concrete. But the ease of the path is the only similarity to a city sidewalk; few cities are sited in such spectacular places. Thankfully no city will ever spoil this shore.</span></span><br /><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">When we went for a walk on the day I made this diptych, my husband was not feeling well, but he knew I really wanted to visit Acadia and go for a hike before going back to Boston. Lansing's back was causing him pain, a result of a ruptured disc two years before. We had been vacationing at the Wagner's new summer house in Brooklin, Maine, and we had been sanding and varnishing the floors, which exacerbated his problems. I suggested a slow walk down the length of the Ocean Path might be something we could both do. As we went along I kept shooting pictures, composing my diptychs in camera. It was a beautiful day, so I knew at least one of them would work out well.</span></span><br /><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">One of the themes I try to include in my work is the impact of humans on the environment, or at least how we interact with it. I see this everywhere in Maine. Sometimes the impact is subtle, a grassy hay field or blueberry crop is there because someone is cultivating that acreage. The buoys of lobster traps dot almost every bay, ringing the islands and peninsulas. Though a lot of my landscapes and seascapes don't have people in them, I do like it when I can include humans. </span></span><br /><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">When we got to Otter Cliffs, at the end of our walk, we saw several people rappelling and rock climbing. I first tried my 135mm lens, a short telephoto on the Bronica RF 645. Then I switched to the 45mm, a wide angle lens, which when used to make a diptych like this takes in 100 degrees. So this scene captures basically all of what I saw with both eyes including my peripheral vision. But it's more than just a snapshot of one moment, because as I had been making earlier pictures I had also been tracking the progress of a lobsterman's boat. They were slowly making their way northward, checking traps that were surprisingly close to the perilous cliffs, and they were about to come into the scene I was capturing. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1dsf6dT_JQCf3k-7rNOFDrxxu_A42lCoNQBUI__nafZV3i4TZjESdVodLMRTNh2xcq2xQMgAu5ndiIWXMxauH1gMrp8QEx_YcnTo3jzVfosUqcZM0DL6H5j3PhqEMWPIqDXR1x1Bb7RFeQPJmOSIMt0bwIESMoob4Fl38MfraR3-Zxb2VrAw4lxmwwJw/s1024/Detao%20Of%20Otter%20Cliffs%20diptych-OtterCliffsDeNewtoned-v2010.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="762" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1dsf6dT_JQCf3k-7rNOFDrxxu_A42lCoNQBUI__nafZV3i4TZjESdVodLMRTNh2xcq2xQMgAu5ndiIWXMxauH1gMrp8QEx_YcnTo3jzVfosUqcZM0DL6H5j3PhqEMWPIqDXR1x1Bb7RFeQPJmOSIMt0bwIESMoob4Fl38MfraR3-Zxb2VrAw4lxmwwJw/w476-h640/Detao%20Of%20Otter%20Cliffs%20diptych-OtterCliffsDeNewtoned-v2010.jpg" width="476" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Detail, Left Frame</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">Before the boat arrived, I shot a picture of the cliffs and hikers, the left frame you see above. Here is a detail of that image. In some ways it doesn't really illustrate what they were doing there. The people actually climbing the cliffs were on the far side, out of the sightline of my camera, so only the people on top show up.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;">
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">After having made the photo that would be the left half of the composition, I had to wait patiently for the boat. When it got to where I wanted it I released the shutter. I didn't know how lucky I was to have pressed the button when I did. As you can see in the detail, one of the men on the boat, the guy who had been pulling up the traps and taking out the lobsters, had just thrown a trap back into the sea, with a nice splash recorded onto film. I could not have been much happier with these two negatives, and so far this is the best selling diptych I have made. While it looks good even printed small on an 8x10" sheet of paper, it's truly impressive when the print is enlarged more, and I have a few prints on 20x30" and 20x24" that show how medium format film captures details that 35mm film pictures just can't deliver.</span></div>
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Steven D. Keirsteadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14491463317314374563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-615548616024655339.post-49908014378397581462009-10-16T15:26:00.011-04:002015-05-06T17:04:52.094-04:00Kiyochika: Samurai to Artist<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Kobayashi Kiyochika (1847-1915) was one of the most interesting artists in Japan in the 19th century. Though he became famous as an </span><i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">ukiyo-e</span></i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> woodblock print designer, Kiyochika was born into a Samurai family, and his father oversaw one of the Tokugawa Shogunate's rice warehouses in Edo (now Tokyo). But from a young age he was always interested in drawing and painting with a brush more than the way of the sword. Though he did take up a musket for the last shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, against the forces of the Emperor Meiji, he was apparently not a great soldier. After the victory of the Imperial forces Kiyochika became unemployed: in the new order the samurai lost their status. Japan changed rapidly under the new Emperor, who was intent on modernizing the country, so that it could defend itself against the more technologically advanced Americans and Europeans.</span></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~keirst/images/KiyochikaLighthouseNightPrint.jpg" imageanchor="1"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black;"><img border="0" src="http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~keirst/images/KiyochikaLighthouseNightPrint.jpg" height="262" width="400" /></span></span></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Kiyochika tried to eek out a living with a traveling group of former samurai demonstrating the discipline of </span><i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">kendo</span></i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> (swordsmanship) for entertainment, but failed in this too. Then he turned to face the new and became a professional artist. His early prints were strikingly in tune with the changes in society, showing the modernization of the new capitol city of Tokyo. Many of these explored artificial lighting at night, as well as new and old buildings around the city. His prints employed large areas of darkly inked night sky and dark ground with reflections and shadows portrayed in a way no Japanese artist ever had done before. A great example is the print </span><i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Kudan Hill on an Early Summer Night</span></i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, 1880. In this work Kiyochika tries to show light and shadow in a scientific way, and this results in something that was quite a bit more realistic than most printmakers of the ukiyo-e tradition had done, with the exception of Hokusai's phase of designing accurate shaded perspective cityscapes.</span></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~keirst/images/Kiyochika-NBPhungdo.jpg" imageanchor="1"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black;"><img border="0" src="http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~keirst/images/Kiyochika-NBPhungdo.jpg" height="205" width="400" /></span></span></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Much later in the 19th century Japan went to war with China for control over the Korean Peninsula, and Kiyochika went into a second prolific period that included some very novel work. He began designing large </span><i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">senso-e </span></i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">print triptychs that were something of a combination of news illustration, propaganda for Japan and an affordable, collectable art. Lansing and I first saw some war triptychs by Kiyochika and other artists at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston a few years ago. And though I find war a great obscenity, there was no denying that I really found them visually compelling. Later on I went on to buy an 1894 Kiyochika triptych of the </span><i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Naval Battle Near Phungdo</span></i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, which he set at night, going back to his successful early style in a larger way.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But for the photographer, one of Kiyochika's most interesting print designs is his triptych of a photographer and his assistant photographing a battle in 1895, called, 18</span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Illustration of Photographing Our Troops Fighting the Fortress-Town Nuizhuang</span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">. It is ironic to see a news image made in the old medium of woodblock printing showing the modern medium of photography, which would soon come to replace that old form as the dominant form of printed news illustration. </span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;">If you want to see more of Kiyochika's works, or find out more about the artist, here are some links:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;">Mini Biography on Artelino:</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><a href="http://www.artelino.com/articles/kiyochika_kobayashi.asp"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">http://www.artelino.com/articles/kiyochika_kobayashi.asp</span></a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Kiyochika War Prints on Artelino:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><a href="http://www.artelino.com/articles/kiyochika-kobayashi-war-prints.asp"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">http://www.artelino.com/articles/kiyochika-kobayashi-war-prints.asp</span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">MIT - Kiyochika's War:</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/throwing_off_asia_02/toa_essay02.html">http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/throwing_off_asia_02/toa_essay02.html</a></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And there's a very well illustrated biographical book By Henry Dewitt Smith, <i>Kiyochika, Artist of Meiji Japan</i>, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California , 1988. It's out of print but available used or in a good art library.</span></span></div>
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Steven D. Keirsteadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14491463317314374563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-615548616024655339.post-20349929933559610952009-10-15T11:13:00.010-04:002015-05-06T17:07:29.393-04:00Life at the Beach<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/steven_keirstead/17394395211" title="Cold Summer Day, Curtis Cove Beach, East Blue Hill, Maine, MMVIII by Steven Keirstead, on Flickr"><img alt="Cold Summer Day, Curtis Cove Beach, East Blue Hill, Maine, MMVIII" height="263" src="https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8755/17394395211_c4c63e8f53_c.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: black;"><a color:="" href="http://photos-f.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs279.snc1/10634_166558570529_754075529_4212091_2142235_n.jpg"></a></span>This is one of my favorite diptychs of those that I recently printed. Actually, I took it last year in August or September 2008, but I did not think much of it when i first saw the contact sheet. It's sloppy compared to my usual ones, having been shot handheld. At the time I was trying to be more careful. For most of my 2008 shots I was using a nice wood tripod with geared head, keeping the horizon flat and swinging the camera a precise number of degrees to avoid overlap between frames.</div>
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But I left the tripod behind when my husband Lansing and I went to the beach in East Blue Hill with his sisters Heather and Nugget, and Heather's daughters. I took my Bronica RF645 and 65mm lens just in case. It turned out to be a bit too cool for me for swimming that day, so I took some pictures while the family hung out on the beach. I think Nugget did take a plunge, as she doesn't mind cool water.<br />
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This shot has a lot of elements I like in it. There's my husband and sisters in law at the far right, the dog in the left frame, the other beach-goers, the colorful beach gear and clothes speckled about here and there, the rocks, the sea the islands fuzzed out by light fog. The crazy horizon doesn't bother me as much now, it makes me think of how Andre Kertesz didn't seem to care about tilting the camera and yet his photos are all the more interesting because of the diagonals he created. I'm sure he was more deliberate, less haphazard than my shooting that day, but the same energy seems to liven up my image.<br />
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Lansing and I got to really enjoy Curtis Cove Beach this August. Now that we have a house in East Blue Hill village, the beach is less than a ten minute walk. We spent a lot of time painting the inside of the house, on some of the hottest days of the year, and the beach was a great relief. The water there is quite comfortable on a hot sunny day, as the tide comes in over the shallow sand, but cool enough to be like instant air conditioning if you are overheated. Hermit crabs and Green crabs skiddle around underwater on the sand, and schools of minnows come streaming by. If you walk or swim out a bit from the water's edge, you can still touch down on the bottom and watch osprey and gulls fly overhead,and if you look to the East you see the mountains of Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island.<br />
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So perhaps my greater love of this beach makes me see more in the diptych above than is really there. Perhaps I am being sentimental in presenting it, when it deserves less attention than other land and seascapes I've done recently. But I still like it. I'm going to hang a 20x24" print of it in my new office in the B1 basement of Harvard's Northwest Sciences labs. It will help keep me sane, knowing I'll go back there soon.Steven D. Keirsteadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14491463317314374563noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-615548616024655339.post-66390994328881191852009-10-14T09:57:00.002-04:002009-10-14T14:26:34.792-04:00The Rinpa School and Photography<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinI6WnYWfaoJiIPq3H9HN8BtdKRJR5yBnTJMcGPNnB65U1cthyMBbDR93LQ66xE60lXhyKSm1nvhohDQkbhVhB0ghKyUExvMXzNPg1U3B-0yvkZ9fqpiSrJRBEvu8dfdyPC0pCDe2-7Ho/s1600-h/Hoitsu-Flowers-and-Grasses-of-Fall-and-Spring.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5392471757361208226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinI6WnYWfaoJiIPq3H9HN8BtdKRJR5yBnTJMcGPNnB65U1cthyMBbDR93LQ66xE60lXhyKSm1nvhohDQkbhVhB0ghKyUExvMXzNPg1U3B-0yvkZ9fqpiSrJRBEvu8dfdyPC0pCDe2-7Ho/s400/Hoitsu-Flowers-and-Grasses-of-Fall-and-Spring.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 194px; margin: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
In 2007, I took a class with Tanya Ferretto Steel at Harvard University in the Extension School, which covered the History of Japanese Art from 1600 to the Present. A bit into the class I had a little epiphany about my photography that led me to the work I am doing now. I realized I could use my Bronica 645 camera, which makes vertical negatives on film to make diptychs, two adjacent negatives I could print onto one piece of paper, using a 4x5" carrier. This is good old fashioned optical printing from film onto Type C Paper, a process I have loved since college. So I began shooting often combining shots that were taken side by side, mostly landscapes, cityscapes and seaside photos. <br />
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</div><div>I continue to be inspired by Japanese Art, and love looking at images of paintings and prints. One of my favorite works shown In Dr. Steel's class was Sakai Hōitsu's pair of painted screens, Grasses and Flowers in Spring and Fall, made some time in the Edo Period (1600-1868) and now in the Tōkyō National Museum. Some day I would like to go see the original paintings. This is an amazing work, as Hoitsu painted the picture over silver leaf, using sumi ink and colors he probably miked for himself using precious materials like lapis lazuli for the blue of the water in the upper right. Hoitsu worked in what is now known as the Rinpa Style, which emphasized bold color instead of the heavy black lines of other Japanese Art at the time. Besides being a lovely study of native plants, this painting is also allegorical. It was painted to hang on the back of another earlier famous painting by Ogata Korin of the Buddhist Wind and Thunder gods Fujin and Raijin, which was a copy of a previous work By Tawaraya Sotatsu. The wind in the plants and the rivulet of water allude to a passing thunderstorm. Also fascinating is that these artists knew each other only through seeing the works of each previous master, usually after death. So the Rinpa Style was not formally handed down directly from master to student, like the official government sponsored Kano School. <br />
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</div><div>It might be cheeky to say so, but I guess my current work is a continuation of the Rinpa tradition, translated to a new country and the new(ish) medium of color photography. And like the other Rinpa artists, I learn not by studying with teacher and adopting his school, but by seeing the works of those old masters, long dead.<br />
</div>Steven D. Keirsteadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14491463317314374563noreply@blogger.com0