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LF: 8X10 at 1800 metres altitude in the Australian Alps.

5120098672_c61501c4f1_b.jpg

Gelatin-silver photograph on Arista Edu Ultra FB VC, image area 20.3cmX25.4cm, exposed in contact with a Fomabrom200 negative. Camera was a Tachihara triple extension 8x10 field view camera with a schneider 121mmf8 Super Angulon lens. The tree has been blasted by years of ice storms and the wood is polished smooth and white.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
5120098672_c61501c4f1_b.jpg

Gelatin-silver photograph on Arista Edu Ultra FB VC, image area 20.3cmX25.4cm, exposed in contact with a Fomabrom200 negative. Camera was a Tachihara triple extension 8x10 field view camera with a schneider 121mmf8 Super Angulon lens. The tree has been blasted by years of ice storms and the wood is polished smooth and white.

Maris,

Congratulations on this fine picture of bare dead tree forms in the winter. It's immediately impressive and get's my attention. I like the lateral spread of the branches and this would seem to ask for a more rectangular form for the final delivery perhaps.

How open are you to suggestions in post-processing, editing to tidy up the picture if that was an option.

Asher
 

Matthew Arnold

New member
Wow, that is a beautiful shot! It really jumps out at you, a more rectangular form as Asher suggests would make sense to me, but as-is it looks great!
 
Maris,

Congratulations on this fine picture of bare dead tree forms in the winter. It's immediately impressive and get's my attention. I like the lateral spread of the branches and this would seem to ask for a more rectangular form for the final delivery perhaps.

How open are you to suggestions in post-processing, editing to tidy up the picture if that was an option.

Asher

I guess playing around with monitor images is possible but a monitor image, a ghost of an electronic file, is a paltry thing compared to an actual photograph. I really only want to look at physical photographs so gazing at monitor images is a necessary and somewhat dismaying experience. But I realise there is no practical alternative short of mailing photographs to each other.

The bare tree image was meticulously laid out on the ground glass screen of an 8x10 camera over a period of about half an hour. Maybe a hundred framing decisions were contemplated and rejected in favour of the one you see. The film was faithfully exposed and the inevitable black verification border frames the picture as I knew it would. The gelatin-silver positive was exposed in contact with with the negative preserving the creative chain with as much integrity as I can muster. The monitor image you see is a scan of that positive and looks just like it within the limits of electronic honesty. In a deep sense to change it would be to dis-endorse it.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
The monitor image you see is a scan of that positive and looks just like it within the limits of electronic honesty. In a deep sense to change it would be to dis-endorse it.

....then, Maris, my good friend, it follows that it's just as you intended as that is perfect and admirable for me too!

Thanks so much for sharing this excellent real photograph. For sure I'd love the print too to demonstrate what one can really do with film when using craft and discipline.

Asher
 

Andy brown

Well-known member
Maris, a gorgeous shot. I'd love to see the print which might actually be a possibility, I live within striking distance of the high country.
Do you exhibit in S.E NSW at all?
Do you know what species of tree it is/was?
I'd be guessing Eucalyptus pauciflora. I'm sure it's one of the snow gums. The thing folks looking at this image probably won't realise is that the bark of the tree when it was alive would have been a riot of amazing colours, greens, greys, bues, creams, orange.

Whereabouts was it shot?
 
Maris, a gorgeous shot. I'd love to see the print which might actually be a possibility, I live within striking distance of the high country.
Do you exhibit in S.E NSW at all?
Do you know what species of tree it is/was?
I'd be guessing Eucalyptus pauciflora. I'm sure it's one of the snow gums. The thing folks looking at this image probably won't realise is that the bark of the tree when it was alive would have been a riot of amazing colours, greens, greys, bues, creams, orange.

Whereabouts was it shot?

The dead tree was a Snowgum, Eucalyptus pauciflora ssp. niphophila, found just over the western side of Kangaroo Ridge at Charlotte Pass. Alternate originals of my Snowgum photographs are held at Point Light Gallery in Surry Hills, Sydney.

The bark patterns of Snowgums are most engaging. Here is a very alive specimen in high summer.


5119448745_cb89c1ec4f_b.jpg
Gelatin-silver photograph on Arista edu Ultra FB VC, image area 20.3cmX25.4cm, exposed in contact with a Fomabrom 200 negative. Camera was a Tachihara triple extension 8x10 field camera with a Schneider 121mm f8 Super Angulon lens. The Snowgum has grown in the shelter of the rock to avoid mountain storms. The trunk is 3 metres wide but only 1.5 metres tall.
 
Bravo Maris!

But I have you beat for foolishly large cameras at insanity altitude :~'))

You win, and by a long margin! Australia is a geologically old and worn-down continent with the highest point being Mount Kosciuszko topping out at only 2228 metres. Occasionally people bicycle to the top to fill in an idle summer morning. When the weather is bad the place could kill you in an hour. A nearby eminence isn't called Mount Perisher for nothing.
 

Andy brown

Well-known member
Maris, I will be in Sydney next week for the first time in a couple of years.

I hope I can find time to look at your work ( there's a lot to cram in).
I'm so glad you've finally posted some images here.
From memory, you joined within the last 12 months and threatened to show us some of your photos. I can see why you hesitated. Like myself (I think), and I'm not putting myself in your league, your work and the way you present it and not being a child of the technological revolution (digital), didn't lend itself to this forum and to show your work here requires a leap of faith (to imagine what the originals must look like).

I for one was hoping like crazy that a practitioner of large format Australian Landscapes ( aren't there some good players in this genre?) would lay down some of our extremely beautiful nature for the appreciative audience that lives here.

Thanks for that doing Maris.

I'm chucking up a couple of colour snaps here to give a brief glimpse of the colour inherent in the trunks of snow gums. There are some remarkable moody misty shots of these gums around. Not by me!
Your second shot is a ripper, what an animal that thing is? How old would it be?


Apologies for the low quality.

Andy



eSnowgumtrunk.jpg




Snowgums.jpg
 
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