The Tao of Walking Ridge

I was sorting through a box of old negatives, thinking to myself how much easier it is to sort through slides, when I stumbled into a couple of slides that had separated from the rest of its group.  One was a beautiful sunset on Lake Huron.  Instantly stunning when seen as a transparency (compared to a negative) and still clear and colorful after more than fifteen years.  Though I’m not sure, I think this may be a sunset off of Presque Isle.  I’m sure it is Lake Huron, where out away from shore nearly every sunset and sunrise is memorable.

For portraits, the warmer tones of Kodachrome 64 would still be my first choice today when trying some inspirational photography in a non-digital form with my old vintage (but optically excellent) photo equipment such as my Nikon FM2N.  However, Kodachrome does not use the E-6 process that most slide films currently use.  Looking ahead, with fewer people using slide film and fewer labs processing slide film, it would make sense to look for an E-6 slide film that would give some flair for fine art work.  Fine grain, and a creative interpretation of color would be the objective.  Enter Wikipedia:

Velvia was introduced in 1990 and quickly replaced Kodachrome 25 as the industry standard in high-definition color film.^{[citation needed]} It had brighter and generally more accurate color reproduction, finer grain, twice the speed, and a more convenient process (E-6)…..

Velvia has the highest resolving power of any slide film.^{[citation needed]} Assuming high-quality optics, a 35 mm Velvia slide can hold detail up to 160 lines per mm^[1], a resolution equivalent to around 22 megapixels on a full-frame sensor.

The colors from Velvia are vivid, and this slide film is widely used and should still be available in the foreseeable future.  Though I have a strong long time affinity to Kodak products, Velvia is worth trying for some experimental photography.

I recently was scanning 40 year old slides for a customer.  The colors were vivid and rich, and the pictures amazingly clear.  It reminded me of why many shot with slide film.  It was common in the publishing world.  For years, the signature look of National Geographic was due in part to the use of Ektrachrome and Kodachrome.  F1 Magazine uses Fujichrome film, which delivers very vivid colors.  But my favorite, the classic warm tone of countless photos, especially glamour and product photos - Kodachrome.

Because of both the longevity and the tonal range of Kodachrome colors, Kodachrome has been used by professional photographers like Alex Webb and Steve McCurry. McCurry’s famous image of Sharbat Gula, the “Afghan girl” portrait taken in 1984 for the National Geographic, was taken with Kodachrome.

When shot with a high quality lens, a 35 mm Kodachrome slide will hold detail equivalent to 25 or more megapixels of image data^{[citation needed]}.

- Wikipedia

The digital scanners available today breath new life into the possibilities of this film.  They are a natural for scanning rather than negatives, which are nearly impossible to sort through.  Don’t want to take that expensive digital camera somewhere?  Get an old vintage film camera, now available quite reasonably, and drop some slide film into it.  I still have a Nikon FM2N with manual focus lenses that are excellent workhorses.  I also have a Konica S2 with a very crisp lens.  Unfortunately, the meter has finally failed on the S2, but I may just get a handy meter or use the Sunny 16 rule outdoors and bracket some shots.  For less than $50, the quality of the images can hardly be beat.  And if my kayak rolls, well, more sentimental loss than monetary.

Stuck in a rut with your photography?  Shooting with slide film will make you think a bit.  Overexposed slide film has a distinctive look.  The movie Three Kings look is due to the use of Ektrachrome:

In addition, Russell shot the film on Ektachrome slide photography stock, and used the bleach bypass process, both to reproduce “the odd color of the newspaper images [of the Gulf War].”

- Wikipedia

Print film is more suited to snapshots, as it is more forgiving of exposure error.  With slide film, exposure changes of 1/2 stop can effect color balance of the image.  However, because the machines that develop the film are not doing any kind of correction at all, slide film does give the photographer total control over his image.

While I was looking through old boxes of photos, I realized too that slides are easy to store, compared to the stacks of prints, some near some far from their negatives.  This sunset was shot 15 years ago on Lake Huron.  Sunsets are spectacular on the Great Lakes.  Scanned with an Epson Perfection 2450 transparency scanner.

Lake Huron Sunset - Kodachrome, September 1991

As I continue to move from Windows to Linux, one of the features that FrontPage had that I missed a bit was the photo gallery feature.  I miss it no more.  SimpleViewer is even easier to use.  They have a plugin for WordPress, but I like the basic SimpleViewer so much I just set it up to open in a new window.  It is very easy to install.  Check out the new Painting Gallery to see how nice it looks and works.

The music business certainly is a mix of the great with the frustrating to say the least.  Hunter S. Thompson had a quote that sums it up succinctly.

The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.

- Hunter S. Thompson

This is my favorite quote about the world of music.

I wanted to add some custom graphics to a fuzz pedal and discovered waterslide decals.  Technically I rediscovered them, as I recall using them with models as a kid.  But I was really happy with the crisp Union Jack graphic decal on my “British Invasion” edition fuzz pedal.

I used a color inkjet printer, leaving the white bits of the graphic clear and then painted the pedal a cream white.  There are many possibilities for the combination of waterslide decal and paint under the transparent areas.  The paint I use is Krylon enamel, with several coats of clear over the waterslide decal to provide durability.  The Krylon applies easily and dries quickly.

The pedal circuit was a standard Aqua Fuzz pedal.  Kits are available, you can build one yourself and give it your own custom look.

For me, maximizing my creativity is largely about tricking the left brain into being uninvolved while I create. I created this panel as a color test, largely to create an alternate color palette for a commissioned work, as shown in previous posts.  As an afterthought, I figured I would also try cropping it, something I’m quite used to as a long time photographer.

The colors certainly do achieve a very different feel.  But I was really happy with the more abstract feel of the tighter cropping.  I’ll find out soon what the customer prefers, but it appears while my left brain was focusing on color, my right brain saw a better abstract form and put it to canvas.

The dark red is cadmium red medium with some black.  The orange is a cadmium orange and cadmium red medium mix.  the yellow is yellow orange azo.  All colors are Liquitex acrylic.  The yellow was (unexpectedly) a transparent, which may have played a role in how it faded as I tapered the line for a smooth feel.