Visits to Maine

Louise on the beach at Pine Point, Maine. Low tide.

Her parents took her there when she was a small child.

 

The response to my picture of the old, abandoned ships at Wiscasset, Maine was surprising and gratifying, and got me thinking about our trips to Maine over the years. We first went in 1982 on vacation. You can read a bit about it here.

Of course, I'm never really on vacation, so I carried two Leica M3s and a lot of Kodachrome film. I shot a lot, but didn't get many photos that I consider memorable. The picture of Louise remembering her childhood on the beach at Pine Point at low tide is one I like.

Lobster shack at York Harbor, Maine

We went back in 1984; again in our Starcraft pop-up Camper. This time I carried Olympus 35mm equipment and my 4x5 view camera. I didn't shoot much with the 4x5, but I got at least two I'm happy with -- the schooners, and the lobster shack at York Harbor.

Dawn at Nubble Light, York, Maine

 In 1988 I had an assignment from Missions USA, the magazine of the Southern Baptist Home Mission Board that took me to several northeastern states, including Maine. Louise was able to accompany me. In addition to my usual 35mm Olympus OM cameras and lenses, I carried a Pentax 6x7 medium format camera and used it to make the photo of the surf at Nubble Light. I had switched to Fujichrome 100D film by this time.

Louise scores her favorite food

Finally, we passed through Maine in our RV, coming and going to Halifax, Nova Scotia in 2019. Photographically, the trip was a bust, but not for Louise, who got to eat her favorite food six days in a row. 

Maine was a great place to go back in the '80s, but has become overrun with tourism, especially along the coast. We will remember our good times there, but we aren't likely to go back.

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

 

You Can't Get Away from Digital

Barn boards and blackberry vines on a Rock City Barn in northeast Louisiana.

 

Two photographic media are in general use: film and digital imaging. 

If you shoot film and want people to see your work you can make prints or project slides (or look at them on a light box or light table.) You can hang prints on the walls of your home, sell prints so other people can hang them on their walls, or, if you're either very good or very lucky, (or just happen to know somebody) you can have a show of your prints at an art gallery. These are basically the limits for even the most diehard film addict who wants nothing to do with digital.

Can you post your film photographs online? No, they will first have to be scanned. That makes them digital images. Can you publish them in a magazine or a book? No, not until they're scanned.

Your digital photographs can go directly from camera to computer to the world-wide web with no intermediate steps. Because they're digital images. In fact, if you're using a cell phone you can skip the computer step. If you want to post your film images on Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, or your blog or web site, they will first have to be digitized. No way around it.

You just can't get away from digital imaging. Like it or not.

Since I want my photographs to be seen by as many people as possible, I use a device called a scanner, two of them, in fact, to digitize my film images. More about that later.

(The blackberry vines growing through the boards of Rock City Barn LA-2 in northeast Louisiana were photographed with a Canon EOS A2 film camera and a Canon EF lens on Fujichrome 100 film. The slide was scanned with a Minolta-Dimage 5400 scanner.)

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Nostalgic for Film

 Derelict schooners, Wiscasset, Main

 I used film happily for 35 years. I did not want change to digital imaging, and did it with great reluctance. (As in, I fought it tooth and toenail.) To me, digital had no "soul."

But "the times, they were a-changin'," as the song says, and it appeared to me that I needed to adopt the new technology if I wanted to remain competitive in my profession.

Digital imaging has many advantages over film photography. Cost is one. Film and processing for a wedding was costing me three to five hundred dollars. And the sharpness and clarity of digital images was clearly superior to film images, even in those early days. My first digital camera, a six-megapixel Canon EOS 10D, made 16x20-inch prints that were indistinguishable from those from my medium format Pentax 6x7.

But still. . .
. . .I like film. There's an indefinable something about the way it looks that appeals to me. I wish I could do a better job of explaining that appeal, but as I said, it's indefinable. Perhaps it only exists in my mind. 

Anyway, I don't shoot much film anymore because digital is just so darned convenient, as well as being essentially free. 

But I'm nostalgic for film. Or maybe I'm just nostalgic for those years in my life. Good years that I would love to live again.

(The schooners (now completely rotted away) were photographed in 1984 with a Calumet-Cambo 4x5 view camera with a 210mm Rodenstock lens, and Kodak Ektachrome 64 film.)

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photographs and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Color or Black and White?

                                                  Sourwood Lane, one of my best-loved photographs

I have great respect for black and white photography. Some of the greatest photographs ever made were on black and white film, and some of the ones I love most.

But the debate is over. Color has won. Millions of color photographs are made every day (think of all those cell-phone users snapping away) and a very, very, almost vanishingly small percent of photos are in black and white.

I shot a lot of black and white film back in the day. It was cheaper than color and I could process it myself with simple equipment and chemicals, which made it even cheaper. But digital imaging changed all that. Color was no longer expensive to shoot -- it was free! Once you had your camera and a memory card or two you could snap away to your hearts content with no further drain on your bank account.

So I no longer shot in black and white. I came to consider color the essence of my photography. And yet. . .

Sourwood Lane in black and white

. . .there's a black and white photograph locked inside every digital color image, just waiting to be let out. And its beauty may surprise you. This is just a quickie Photoshop conversion from the Sourwood Lane color file, yet it has a loveliness all its own.

Most digital cameras can be set to make both a black and white jpeg and a color RAW file at the same time. So it's win-win either way. If you have a little experience with Photoshop you can easily make a black and white from any file without losing the original.

Try it. You may like it. In fact, you may find that you've added a whole new dimension to your photography.

 

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photographs and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.