Autumn Is Here

Alisaith, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, October 2003

Recovered Silver: Bringing Negatives Back From the Dead

Cadillac Graveyard, U.S. Route 66 

Amarillo, Texas, June 2006

It is very difficult photographing a place that's been made famous primarily through some predecessor's camera.  Such is the case with the whimsical and eccentric Cadillac Graveyard outside Amarillo (which my Puerto Rican friend Marimer pronounces "Amarijo") on the famed Mother Road, U.S. Route 66.

So, instead of trying a novel angle, or ultra-saturated color palette, I put a magazine loaded with Agfapan 25 on the back of my Rolleiflex SL-66, put a yellow filter over the lens, and shot a whole roll of people interacting with the famed car sculpture.

Except, I didn't:  When I unloaded the magazine up the road, I found it'd been loaded with Fuji Velvia 50!  I had the lab pull it to ASA 25, and talk about saturation, as in yellow!

So, by virtue of my Nikon Coolscan and Adobe Photoshop, I played around and tweaked this image until it achieved its intended look.

Road Trip: New Mexico

El Comedor Restaurant, U.S. Route 66

Moriarty, New Mexico, November 2006

When traveling the old highways of North America, I tend to not make U.S. Route 66 a destination.  Even though it's right up my alley, subject-wise, I am too busy documenting roads neglected by the photographer's lens; there are hundreds of photographers already photographing every inch of Route 66.

Nonetheless, while criss-crossing the map, I invariably happen onto Route 66, and I get sucked in by all the decaying beauty of the "Mother Road," until I'm back onto another highway whose fading relics capture my attention.

Unintentional Photo Effects

U.S. Route 285, Eddy County, New Mexico, 2008

This photograph was taken on Fuji Velvia 50 color transparency (slide) film, on my Rolleiflex SL-66.  At the time this image was captured, I only had Velvia in my camera, as I hadn't brought along any black-and-white negative film for the camera.  I did have a roll of 35mm Kodak Tri-X, but this composition struck me as a square, not a rectangle (either vertical or horizontal).

I finally got around a few months ago to scanning this transparency, as I envisioned it as a black-and-white print.  The strangest thing happened with the tones:  The resultant scan turned out looking almost as if the picture was taken on infrared film, particularly in the deep grays of the sky and the paleness of the shrubbery.  (Red, however -- which is the color of the "WHITE'S CITY" sign -- came out in normal tonality, not as a shimmering white, as it would appear on infrared film, through a red filter).

Of course, this oughtn't to have surprised me, given Velvia's exagerated color curves -- which, when desaturated produce exagerated tonal curves.

Still, I love the otherworldly feel of this picture, something not uncommon in New Mexico landscapes.