While in the UK a couple of years ago, I bought a coffee mug which a
caricature of the Pope on a pogo stick. The caption under it was "Pope
springs
eternal." The play on words made me laugh so I bought it as a gift for one of
my
cousins. I bought another one by the same artist which depicted a bunch of
wolves pushing lawn mowers around creating patterns in the grass. Its caption
was, "Wolf gang mows art." Again it made me laugh and now resides with
another cousin in Baton Rouge. This is a rather long way of getting around to
saying, "Pope springs eternal" and I'm sure the Odyssey camera will make its
way to Sugar Land before next spring. I was a little worried when it hadn't
arrived before the 6th, however that is behind us now and I remain very
popeful
the camera will get here soon.
Last Tuesday I began a "basic B&W darkroom" class at the Glassell School at
the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. Other than a brief bad experience at
Rice University continuing education several years ago, it has been about 33
years (that would be 1973) since I've really spent any time in a photographic
dark room. Yes, I've been in dark rooms and had my head in dark places since
then, but I'm talking about getting my hands in chemistry, stains on my
clothes and dropping something that doesn't need to be on the floor in a
totally
dark room. You get the picture, which in this case I guess would be a B&W one.
This class is the prerequisite for their other classes. What drew me to
take classes at Glassell is the work of several other photographers I have
seen
over the past few years. Each was doing very nice work and each was also
going through the program at the MFA school. Students have access to a nice
B&W
darkroom while registered and from what I can see the instructors are very
competent. All of this may not seem too strange, until you factor in my having
earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Photography in 1971 . . . but then
one needs to factor in that I put down my cameras for about 28 years.
Our first class was essentially, "this is a camera." Pretty cool, given one
of the premises under which we are working on the Odyssey is, "this is an
OM." There are just a few fairly basic assignments over the next couple of
months and one of the constants is shooting at least two 36 exposure rolls of
Tri-X each week. Although not stated in the assignment, I have taken on a
self assignment of "think about what the heck you are doing with each
exposure,
pay attention to what you know and see what you can discover that you don't
know." That can have you be more "focused" before you release the shutter.
So in the last 24 hours I've exposed my two rolls and have just loaded
another. Guess I should be using my OM 1 if I were wanting to get in practice
for
the Odyssey, however old habits are hard to break, and as several of you would
guess, it is an OM 2S that has been getting a workout. Most of what I shot
on the first two rolls was done with the 85mm f2, either with or without some
extension. I've also used the 50mm f3.5, a silver nosed 50mm f1.8 (Ken, I
don't know where that one came from), 16mm f3.5 and a pinhole body cap.
Probably have done variations of 20+ different subjects.
One of the places I was doing some work was at a drum store/school that a
friend of mine owns. We had talked, in the past, about my doing some
photography in his store. He has suggested that I set up a show of the work
I'm doing
in his shop and then we will have a "gallery opening" and jam session for
musicians and photographers. That could be pretty neat, as his facility in
really nice and the room we would do it in would be perfect for a show.
Large,
well lit, bare walls, stage. I'll tell you what I told him, "Lets see what
we get" and what I'll tell you that I didn't tell him is that I'll get some
good images. I've always been fascinated with the patterns, textures,
designs, etc. in his store. Although I could mix some color in with the B&W,
I
see this as being a B&W exhibit. We will see . . .
What I'm experiencing and what I suspect others who have done their Odyssey
images have experienced, is a little like checking your hard drive for
viruses. It is a scan of your brain to check and see what you have in those
files
that has worked in the past and revisiting those files that have material
which didn't work and seeing what you might do to produce a different result
this time. This is also a process which clears up space to create new files,
so
I guess perhaps I'm doing a de-frag at the same time. When was the last
time you did a brain scan? Perhaps this Odyssey project will give a few
others
the opportunity to do their version of this process.
So folks, I've gone to the utilities and am anxiously awaiting the arrival
of the Odyssey camera. If it shows up this summer, you will likely see some
B&W rather than color from Texas. Until then I'll just keep running those
utilities. <[8^) Bill Barber
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