Sunday, April 18, 2010
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Two Thousand and Ten
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Making the Old New Again
Many of these images never did justice to their original conception and failed as formal artistic statements. Such images are waiting to be reclaimed, mixed with other equally failed misfires into a final idea that allows their intrinsic beauty to be finally realized.
I shoot more new images today that ever before, but often edit more. Digital makes for more shots, shots that I would have never taken in the days of $10 a roll Kodachrome. Digital does help with one thing, however, that use to haunt me, looking for images that are substantive in the brain, but never actually were snapped.
The primary problem with taking so many pictures becomes one of finding what you are looking for when you need it. Shakespeare said it best:"You can't see the forest for the trees." If the experienced could offer one piece of advice to the young it would be this: "Take a few minutes to organize and annotate your images as you make them. In the days of roll film and prints, it was harder to lose things. Today with digital, if you fail to create order you will have no idea what, when, where, or how as your hairline gradually climbs your head like the tide on a twilight beach,"
The bounty of the past awaits those that stick with it, but remember sometimes finding where you have been is more difficult that those first steps.
Friday, November 11, 2005
November 2005
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Shadowmold Hiatus Continues
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Uploading Images to Flickr
New Shadowmold at Expressions
I've finally began retooling the Shadowmold Photo Blog on the Expressions Photoblogging Service. I'm twecing the template and adding images as I go. I've decided to dispense with dated entries and simply number them, arranging the archives or galleries by catagories. So far I like the look. Basic but intuitive.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Continuing Through Boxes
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Friday, June 10, 2005
Flatbed Scans of Old Negatives
Title: Graduating Twins with Brother and Mother.
I am spending a good deal of my time this summer going through and organizing boxes and boxes of photographs and ephemera I have produced and collected over the last thirty years. I have come across a box of black and white negatives I produced in the early 1970s and am experimenting with scanning these negatives on a flatbed scanner.
Title: Abandoned Family Pickup.
Employing Photoshop, I've been making adjustments to render a decent print. I discovered with my first few negatives that the process of scanning tends to create artifacts that were not in the original photographs. Surface scratches, dust and blemishes become an intrinisic part of the image.
Title: Monument To The Domestic Life
The images above are representational of the group. Look at all the images in my photo set "Negatives" at Flickr.
Monday, May 23, 2005
The People in CJL's Photographs
• Monita Gerson
• Beatrice Prendergast
• Cecilia Stewart
• Elaine Duke
• Weeks Hall
• Dora Harrison
• Elizabeth Heintzen
• Louise McIntosh
• Nan Byrne
• Gloria Simon
• Elise Whitney
• Dick Lyon
• Mary Joel Weil
• Roland Duvernet
• Sandy Engels
• Edgar Bley
More will follow.
Sunday, May 22, 2005
Important Addresses and Locations in CJL Life and Photographs
• 627 Decatur Street
• Metarie Cemetary.
• Audubon Park.
• Greenwood Cemetary.
• Live Oak Plantation.
• Girod Street Cemetary. (No longer extant) The Super Dome is built on this site. Link.
• Acme Marble Works
• The corner of St. Peter and Royal
• Lafayette Cemetary
• St. Roch Cemetary
More to follow.
Sunday, May 15, 2005
Clarence John Laughlin's Photo Groups
Group A: Still Lifes
Group B: Marine Forms
Group C: Tree Forms
Group D: Early Industrialism
Group E: Metal Magic
Group F: Glass Magic
Group G: Fantasy in old New Orleans
Group H: Lost New Orleans
Group I: Satires
Group J: Images of the Lost
Group K: Visual Poems
Group L: Poems of the Interior World
Group M: The Louisana Plantations
Group N:Forms of Today
Group O: Color Experiments
Group P: Rock Forms
Group Q: New Anatomies
Group R: Sculpture Seen Anew
Group S: The Magic of the Object
Group T: The Mystery of Space
Group U: American Victorian Architecture
Group V: Vintage Prints
Group W: Fantasy in Europe
Read more about Clarence John Laughlin here
Sunday, May 08, 2005
Template Modifications
notion that "the medium is the message". That is to say, with so many people using the Blogger default templates, a sameness begins to invade all these self-expressions. Double takes are common. Question Marks jump into to your head. Have I been here before? This all seems familar. Maybe its just the fact that we all share a common culture, a common bias. Or perhaps, we need to change the color of the font we are using.
Experiment! Look at the template. Learn your way around CSS. Try things. Modify and preview. If the change stinks change it back. One big area that helps is to create a banner in Photoshop and replace the text box generated by the default template.
Make it really your own. Sometimes a little change works wonders.
Saturday, April 30, 2005
Flickr
WAO Part 3: Numbering
0501A.DM_0001
The first two digits "05" is the year. ie. 2005
The next two digits "01" is the annual serial number ie. "01" The first set of 2005
The fifth digit "A" is an extra number for future needs. A=Means that the roll number is correct. X=Means that I'm not sure if the roll number is correct. Given the inconsistent numbering of some of my original media, I must rely on a guess. The "X" means that I should check these images.
Period. (Divides the set number)
The seventh digit is an alpha chracter that indicated the medium of the original image. With scanning I need a way to know where the original image came from. I have a list of these designators. "D" means digital original. "T" means color slide.
The eight digit indicates the original capture device. "M" means Canon 300D. I have designator for each of the cameras I have used over the years.
The last 4 digits are arbitrary. The camera provides this number when I shoot digital. When I scan, the scanner serializes the images as they are scanned. When I'm scanning prints I add the number. I make no attempt to serialize this number to the actual slide or negative.
WAO Part 2
Old Skool New Skool
Friday, April 29, 2005
Workflow Annotation Organizing:
WAO Part 1
Friday, April 22, 2005
Shadowmold Still Changing.
The next step will be to revise the Archives, Thumbs and About pages. Another weekend consumed. So much for actually photographing something!
Friday, April 15, 2005
Testing Haloscan Comments and Trackback
Hacking the Bogger Navbar
Thursday, April 14, 2005
Sunday, April 10, 2005
For the Record
Lossing interest or something else snares your passion for a time and things pile up. That was the condition of my collections last year about this same time. Since then, I've made some decisions about how and what to organize. All my color slides and those of my father and grandmother are now in slide pages in archivical boxes. I know that they are sequenced chronologically.
My methodolgy has been to work on one area and then move onto the next step. Lately I've began scanning many of the slides before I know where they are. Time of course is the enemy, too much of it and not enough of it.
The photoblog has brought order and focus to the entire project and to my life somewhat.
Saturday, April 09, 2005
Update.Beginning
Shadowmold is moving along quite nicely, though at present I'm using blogger rather than the ubiqutous Movable Type. Why? Movable Type requires computer expertise, I don't at present possess and wonder if I in fact need to possess. Software has a way of superceding develper tools and becoming end user friendly. I want to do what I do rather quickly and don't want the learning curve.
I may change my mind tomorrow.
All planned parts of Shadowmold are up and working with the exception of the galleries and thumbnail views. I'm not pleased with the formatting in Blogger's comment system, but I may find a way around that as I have the one-picture-at-a-time-limitation.
Right now I'm interested in getting a platform for the pictures working to enable contact with other photographers.