Woody Campbell – Page 736 – 16 years of one photograph every day for the rest of my life

Friday August 24, 2012

SALT LAKE CITY UTAH – I can hear the question now: “What are you doing in Salt Lake outside of ski season?” The simple answer is that I grew up here and I’ve returned this weekend for my high school reunion – an opportunity to connect with the girl (now a grandmother) who I had a hopeless crush on and with my friend Jerry Stephens, who I did my first photography with (it turns out that it was less important to him than it was to me), and generally to hang out with a bunch of older people who I haven’t seen for a very long time. See my biography link in the column to the right.

I flew to Salt Lake this morning; killed time for a couple of hours driving around photographing old neighborhoods; and then went to a picnic in Sugarhouse Park. The theme of the reunion is “Highland’s Greatest Year” – my senior year we won the state football championship. I shot the entire weekend with my Leica M9 and Noctilux lens, mostly with a .9 neutral density filter at f.95.

Highland's Greatest Year - 2 — Highland’s Greatest Year – 2

Highland's Greatest Year - 3 — Highland’s Greatest Year – 3

Highland's Greatest Year - 4 — Highland’s Greatest Year – 4

On this day last year: Belvedere Castle. Struggling to produce something interesting working on a tripod.

Thursday August 23, 2012

NEW YORK NEW YORK – On Broadway and around Rock Center with my Noctilux.

On this day last year:

Wednesday August 22, 2012

NEW YORK NEW YORK – I’ve just come through a couple of poor days from a photo point of view. A major mistake and a major blah. I resolved to get serious today so I bolted the Nocti on to my M9, screwed on the .9 neutral density filter (so I can shoot wide open at f.95 in daylight) and went out into the world (actually to 22nd Street to put some film in for processing). Not bad. A day of looking up. It looks like my mojo just went into hiding for the last couple of days.

Dinner with the Nocti.

Shot through a sheet of saran wrap over the lens.

On this day last year: Look up!

Tuesday August 21, 2012

NEW YORK NEW YORK – Shrubbery at night with my Nocitlux:

On this day one year ago: the women in my life. Just a snapshot but close to home.

Monday August 20, 2012

NEW YORK NEW YORK – What a mess. This morning I worked on cameras (which is overdue). I shot a test roll on my new M4 to check shutter speeds and cleaned lenses and the sensor on my M9. I walked around the neighborhood and captured a dozen or so images for this project, and shopped to update my wardrobe a bit. Here’s the mess. On August 21 (that’s tomorrow but remember that I post these about a week late) I took another pass at cleaning the M9’s sensor, but I hit “format card” on the menu on the camera. rather than “clean sensor”. In other words I wiped out the images for August 20. I spent a couple of hours with disk recovery software trying to fix the problem but failed. This is the third time that mess ups involving storage media have jeopardized this project. People talk about storage media failing, but it’s actually much more likely that people fail.

Anyway the test roll of film that I took with the M4 saved the day – it came out fine. Here’s one of the test images taken with my M4, Ilford Delta 100 film and a 50mm Dual-Range Summicron lens.

On this day last year: Shade garden.

Sunday August 19, 2012

WAREN CONNECTICUT – More of Doug and Judy’s house. This taken with my M9 and 24mm Summilux lens. Two frames stitched. This post illustrates a problem with the web format for images: the browser contains the width of images. I use 900 pixels, which is large by web standards and means that this site loads more slowly than it might otherwise, but this is a photo site and image quality matters to me. The result of the 900 pixel limitation, though, is that horizontally oriented pictures like this one, which can be stretched out on a wall in person, end up being very small on the web. This results in a bias toward portrait orientation in the pictures that I post, and probably in the pictures that I take. The web has affected by shooting style.

On this day one year ago: Fog at sunrise.

Saturday August 18, 2012

WARREN CONNECTICUT – A dislocated weekend. For today and tomorrow we’ve ceded our house to our daughter, Francesca, for a bachelorette party that she’s throwing for a friend. Dangerous territory. So we’re camping out for the weekend at Doug and Judy Hamilton’s house because they’re on the way to Salt Lake via the California Zephyr (a train!). I spent today photographing Doug and Judy’s house with my Alpa Max and Phase One IQ 180 back. Then the bachelorettes descended on us for cocktails, which I captured in the waining light with my M9 and a 1954 50 mm Dual-Range Summicron lens. Here you go:

Judy and Doug's House — Judy and Doug’s House

On this day last year: a picture of a camera. Not really that cool.