christian harkness - photo blog

“Cold Fronts, Clouds and Islands…”

christian harkness — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:55:56 +0000

A ‘cool’ front was passing through last night and this morning when I took my walk. So it was still humid and interesting looking clouds moved across the sky. I could see blue sky through the clouds, and figured they would not ‘hang around very long.’ This one is looking east just a few steps from our front door. About a mile down the road, looking across the water at Atsena Otie Key, there was for a brief moment, a break in the clouds and I could see a bit of blue sky and this contrail far above the low flying clouds.I really don’t think of myself as a landscape or ‘cloud’ photographer, but I have certainly enjoyed my recent photographs which have concentrated on those scenes.

“Cyanotypes and Waterwomen…”

christian harkness — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 23:01:31 +0000

Let me start off by saying that on my screen at least, this scan looks way to magenta and ‘harsh’ – pretty lousy in fact. When I have it open in Photoshop it looks pretty good – so what you see on the screen is just an approximation……

I just replaced the scan with a photo and it sure looks better. Still not quite as good as the print, but…..

Finally I have managed to make a decent Cyanotype print. I used to do them all the time, with ‘no sweat’ and for some reason, on this ‘go around’ I have had loads of difficulties. Here is what the negative looks like:

So I coated another two sheets of 8.5×11 inch Arches hot press watercolor paper this morning, gave it a couple of hours to dry and then exposed it on the Arts Center porch. One for 4.30 minutes, that came out a bit too dark, and the next one for 3.30 minutes that came out fine. Here it is washing in the sink. I developed it first for a minute or so in vinegar, the bottle on the left, and then followed that with a water development/wash for about five minutes. The print

in this photo looks a lot more like the original than the ~~scan~~ photo above. What I confirmed today was that I simply have to expose the paper within about a couple of hours of coating it or it oxidizes, or whatever it does, and is no good. That’s what happened to me the day before yesterday when I coated the other two sheets, and yesterday morning they looked like this:

“Funky Clouds, Atsena Otie Key and Cyanotype…”

christian harkness — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 21:10:29 +0000

This morning I walked down to the Arts Center to coat some Arches watercolor paper with Cyanotype emulsion. The moist and warm weather is still around, and as I was getting towards the Beach Front Motel, the clouds around the sun were making a rather funky pattern. They were changing rather rapidly and I really wanted to photograph them. The tide was out, and there were some dolphins playing in the water in front of me. I desperately wanted to get the dolphins into the picture, but they weren’t surfacing and the clouds were moving. So, this one is without dolphins. [Atsena Otie Key in the background]

When I got to the darkroom, I did coat my paper with Cyanotype emulsion, and left it to dry , hopefully to use tomorrow morning. The sun was still behind the clouds, and it was not shining strong enough to give me the kind of exposure I was hoping for.

This time around I am using the pre-mixed Cyanotype chemistry from Photographers Formulary.

“Driving to Tallahassee…”

christian harkness — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 20:46:30 +0000

This morning I had to drive to Tallahassee for an appointment. Although it is still January, spring like weather was spreading over northern Florida, with the temperatures expected to reach the upper 70′s, and moister air moving into the area. There was no doubt in my mind that air was moist. There was dense fog covering Cedar Key and the mainland as I started driving at seven this morning. I had my camera in my pocket and wanted to make some photos, but thought I’d be better off keeping both hands on the wheel, and watching the road. As it got later in the morning and I was on highway 19, with its four lanes of divided highway, I could not resist and took three photos of the surrealist looking fog and sky/cloud combination. I think this one is a ‘keeper’ for my 19/98 portfolio.

At first I was a bit bothered by the parts of the dash and windshield showing and also the partial trees on the right hand side, but then I realized those things were really in keeping wiht the rest of the portfolio, conveying the sense of driving on highways 19/98.

“Five Cedar Key WaterWomen…”

christian harkness — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 21:16:00 +0000

Top, Mrs. Beckham and her daughter Jeanine between Atsena Otie Key and Cedar Key. Jeanine wrote about herself and her upbringing, “Although my father died while harvesting oysters on Corrigan’s Reef when I was only 10 months old, and wasn’t in my life to influence me, I have still been drawn to the follow in his footsteps by making a living working on the Gulf of Mexico…My mother was left with four children & one on the way. She set a great example for me that sank into my heart permanently by being a strong water woman…”

Next, Diana and April building a clam belt in April’s backyard, and bottom, Lynell Fine on her boat with crab boxes in the background.

Although these are all older photos, I am reworking them for an exhibit coming up in April. I will be making about fifty 13×19 prints, and I will be posting a lot of the prints I am making here and also on my photo-store blog.

“Diana at the Old Tebo House….”

christian harkness — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 18:52:14 +0000

Diana at home working on the water and as an elegtant southern lady in the old Tebo house. Or as she wrote “…floral and salty aromas linger in the warm summer air.”

“The Atlantic Monthly Blog – Post Card From Cedar Key…”

christian harkness — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 17:40:38 +0000

Thanks to a tip from John Wall’s blog: Southern Photography, one of my WaterWomen photos is on The Atlantic Monthly’s Arts & Lifestyle blog today.

ps. The photo was taken with a Holga.

“Deadman’s Key…”

christian harkness — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 16:51:08 +0000

The TINY speck of land, about three quarters to the right on the horizon, is Deadman’s Key. The bigger one, center left is Seahorse Key. The reason you can see Deadman’s Key at all is that a cold front passed through last night, and there is very little moisture and haze in the atmosphere. On a lot of hot and humid summer days you can’t make it out at all, and sometimes it seems closer, and sometimes further away, and I swear, sometimes somebody has moved the Key altogether

After decades of shooting film, I find it refreshing that I can go our for my morning walk, take a digital photo and post it – all before lunch. There are loads of wonderful things to say about film photography, but I truly enjoy this part of digital photography.

“Jeanine at her Oysterhouse…”

christian harkness — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 00:33:12 +0000

As I mentioned in a previous post I basically never saw her when she was not working, and at a pace I certainly could never have kept up with, even had I had her skills, which I don’t. Here she is getting ready to shuck oysters in her oysterhouse, and how she does that hour after hour and still look stunning and alert, I will never know.
As usual, I photographed her with my SLR, 50mm lens and Fuji Neopan 1600. There is not that much light in the place and it comes from behind Jeanine’s back – so there is a lot of contrast and deep shadows all around.

“Of Friends, Film, and Photography….”

christian harkness — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:12:01 +0000

My friend Linda stopped by today and we discussed making a whole slew of prints for an upcoming event in which she is involved. We went over paper choices and printing costs. Hopefully we will end up making a bunch of 13×19 b&w prints. I was surprised to figure that the material cost for each print would probably be around $6.70 per print. That is figuring in the cost of ink and paper, and some leeway for making test prints, or messing up a print. I probably underestimated the cost. To come up with some paper choices I relied on Chase Jarvis’s blog post Printing & Hanging a Photography Show

I first ran across mentioning of Chase Jarvis on the APE’s blog. Jarvis was catching all kinds of flak from readers who did not like his photography, his persona, nor apparently anything else about this guy. Well, I went and looked him up and found him to a lot of fun and interesting, although he is a bit full of it sometimes, but hey – he is doing what he likes to do and in the process seems to employ a bunch of people who also like what they are doing. Isn’t that what most of us would really like to be doing? So, giving him a lot of crap seems to me to be just plain envy, nothing less. Do look him up.

This brings me around to what I want to say about friends like Linda. We all need them, somebody who believes in our work, pushes it when they get a chance , and models for us when we want to work on a personal project, letting our creativity take over. This portrait of Linda was done a while back indoors, where there was not much light, without lights or reflectors.I used my cheap Yashica SLR, Fuiji Neopan 1600 film, and a 50mm lens. For a while I had subscribed to the conventional wisdom that one needed an 80 to 100 mm lens for 35mm portrait work. Well, I found that I like working with a 50mm better. I could get closer to the subject, and really see what was happening, and interact much better on a personal level. Like everything else in photography/art, it really comes down to finding ones own way of working. Others can give advice, but as I tell my students, if you develop your film by sticking it into a toilet bowl and flushing, and your film comes out to your liking, GO FOR IT!

A brief note about Fuiji Neopan 1600. I keep mentioning it because I used it almost exclusively. However, I want to point out that since the fading of film photography, many films and papers and cameras have disappeared. I was totally shocked to discover that there seems to be some sort of ‘scalping’ going on in the film trade. There is a place on Amazon that is advertising the cost of ONE roll of Neopan 1600 as being $62.93. That is insane, and I sure hope none of the readers of this blog will ever pay that kind of price for a roll of film. I guess the film is basically no longer available – I really want to make it clear that my mentioning the film does not mean that I suggest you go out and buy some at a ridiculous price!