Allen Street in State College, Pennsylvania on Sunday morning — would have been fine to ride the Vespa in to town. Roads were mostly clear. I passed the opportunity in favor of warmth. I can only attribute this weaseling decision to aging, some treacherous biological process of confiscation of all that’s good in life. There are always opportunities for recovering missed opportunities. As I type the thermometer has descended to 9F in the dark amidst a 25mph wind and promises to settle near -5F by dawn. No snow or ice so I could ride to work. But I digress…
I’ve been thinking a lot about photography lately, or more precisely how little time I spend making photographs. I don’t count the ones you see here for some reason, or the ones I make professionally. If its digital it doesn’t count. Instead I continue to puzzle over how to bring the 3 Prints Project back into my creative life. A hole remains where those silver prints used to reside. It’s a crazy thing that I’m not ready to explain.
My friend Paul Ruby showed up at Saint’s Cafe with a box full of prints. Digital prints. And the one that resonated strongly was crafted to look like a platinum print despite being shot with a digital camera, processed with Photoshop and printed on exhibition grade fiber paper with an Epson 3880 printer.
Looking at that print had visions of Tri-X dancing in my head. With no Vespa available to distract me the chemical photography scheming continued to grow.
Gordon Harkins, the third leg of our photographic meetings, (or maybe he’s the first leg?) did his best to distract us with his brand new Canon DSLR camera (a 6D?) that was able to operate wirelessly from an iPhone. It was like magic.
Being an engineer, Paul was completely enthralled with the electrical wizardry. Why couldn’t I get caught up in the same wave of astonishment instead of dreaming about mixing chemicals, processing film and making prints? This is 2014 and film has to be dead.
I’m stubborn I guess…
