Robert Langham

Ebay photos.

2012-01-05T20:28:00.000-08:00

Dr. Sneed and I split a little Ansel Adams Yosemite print from the AA gallery. Then I found a W. Eugene Smith photo he had shot for Life Magazine that we got at a bargain. I'm always picking at cheap WWII photos. 12.00 and under. Some are really wonderful.

Here's "Killer" Joe Piro, a NY Coast Guardsman living it up at a USO dance contest in June of 1942. Original print. Probably a Graflex 4X5 with bulb flash.

Marine Cpl Jackie R. Perry from Dallas, Texas writing a letter home from a trench near the DMZ. He was lost two months later. This is a transmitted wirephoto- not on photo paper but on wirephoto stock. It has bleached out and will fade. Not worth paying much for wirephotos as they won't stand much light. Most likely the image is a 35mm film shot.

Post-WWII publicity shot of Jerry Colonna, Bob Hope's sidekick through many USO tours and movies. Probably an 8X10 contact.

Got a stack of others though I certainly miss some jewels because I'm not bidding very hard. I'd rather have these prints made for news than the modern archive reprints. I haven't had much luck with Owens Archive and others. One I won was a British Press photo that was a ferrotyped 11X14 with a wonderful range of tones. Amazing what is available.

Beautiful fall.

2011-12-16T15:27:00.000-08:00

It's passing quickly as the rain takes the leaves off the trees. Keeping the Deardorff filmed up and ready. Shooting in really edgy light- on the edge of not enough.

Hope I'm guessing right. Shooting with black and white HP5 Ilford sheet film so I'm thinking past the color.

W. Eugene Smith Photo

2011-12-05T14:34:00.000-08:00

The Good Doctor Sneed and I bought a photo off Ebay. Nice little find of mine, a 1944 press photo by Smith of a soldier in a foxhole with a dog. Pure schlock, but a cute image.

The Blackfork Guide available as ebook on Blurb!

2011-12-04T17:43:00.000-08:00

1.99 and you can download and read it at a really great price. It's quite worth it!

Blurb.com

Rain, overcast, winter light.

2011-11-26T12:03:00.000-08:00

Many hours outside in the fall hunting deer. Too bad I can't photograph and hunt at the same time. There are some wonderful scenes and striking light under the grey skies of this time of year. Several times, sneaking down a track in the creek bottom I've had to back up and frame a scene that would was a photograph.
The drought has either broken or been interrupted by fall weather. We'll never catch up on this years rain but the creeks are running again. I couldn't cross Butler Creek the other afternoon.

Tap water temps in a great range. Need to be working in the darkroom.

Photographer's Equinox, 2011.

2011-10-20T19:50:00.000-07:00

Photographer's Equinox today: tap water at 68 degrees out of the cold side. Time to get in the lab. Just for the hell of it I put a pretty good print up on ebay at a dirt cheap price.

Photographers Equinox.

2011-10-09T13:45:00.000-07:00

Been taking the late class out to look at the late light every afternoon. The moon has been cranking over and seems like the light is very dramatic. Just checked the cold side of the tap water at the lab: 82 degrees. When it gets under 80F I can print. That will be fun!

Today was the first day that has had any kind of interesting clouds in the sky. Overcast all day with a front rolling up. Rain turned the dog and I around on a trip to the lake to check deercams but it hasn't shown up in town yet. Usually this time of year is marked by great foliage displays. Not going to be one of those years.

Weather and Temperature Changes.

2011-10-04T20:56:00.000-07:00

Every season is different but seems like the light and the temperature have really taken a turn for the better the last month. The Photographers Equinox- when tap water runs 68 degrees, must be getting close.

Ordered a big old view camera box. Hard sided. Of Ebay today for next to nothing. Even cashed in some Ebay bucks to make it cheaper. I'm using a box older than I am for my 5X7 Deardorff now. This one older than that. Probably use it for 8X10 lenses and film holders.

Spent three days shooting the Texas State Rifle Association Service rifle Championship with digital and video....and an AR15. (Came out second by three points in an 800 point match with 100+ competitors). OK shooting. Now much work to be done on digital files.

Running deercams more frequently as the season gets closer. Those images over at Blackfork.

Film using spy satelite from the cold war.

2011-09-16T13:49:00.000-07:00

Quite a story. No idea how they got the images down but the thing evidently used film. Might have been jettisoning packets that were then recovered. For a long time the Air Force had a system of snatching parachuting items out of the air.

Now everything is digital. Much easier to get data back.

2011-09-15T14:44:00.001-07:00

Doesn't happen every day.

2011-09-15T14:01:00.001-07:00

And shouldn't!

Tap Water 99 degrees.

2011-08-18T20:26:00.000-07:00

Out of the COLD side. Having to use every old indian trick in the book, like using the hot water side but leaving the water heater off, (so you have a tank of 76 degree water), frozen ice gallons in milk cartons, et.
Be happy when the air conditioners fall silent in October.

Three photos.

2011-08-15T15:52:00.000-07:00

What is the subject of this photo? John's smile. Notice how it sits on an X drawn from corner to corner. The photographer saw something and lazered in on it but disregarded everything else. John is chopped at the elbows, (framing), the background is floating, the viewpoint useless, only the lighting and the moment called forth are helping the image.

What's the subject of this photo? The trees across the street have as much importance as the men at the table though they are in the background. Cropping closer would help a mediocre image. It almost begins to work with the foreground/middle ground/background set-up.

All background, no subject. What was it the photographer thought he saw that made him reach for his camera?

Three visually illiterate photos. Sent by a friend who shot them on the Camp Perry trip. I'll come back and talk about why these photos don't work after a bit.

Go straight to Blurb and buy my book: The Blackfork Guide. It will steer you out of all the above problems.

Photography is like anything else- fixable and subject to education!

Lake Erie and the National Matches.

2011-08-09T14:11:00.000-07:00

Since we were driving I included my 5X7. Just got it out three times, Once a a huge wreck of a barn full of barn swallows and Poison Ivy, once for a white arc of a barn where there was no photo, (due to uninteresting light), and once for a miraculous piece of last-gasp sunlight on a Big Cottonwood alongside Lake Erie.

My real job at the National Matches was to shoot for the Texas Team. Just had a couple of afternoons off. Great to have my 5X7 along, but very different experience. In the meantime I burned about 1000 files on the Nikon, all of rifle team stuff.

Made the President's 100 (21st out of 1900 shooters), and won the National Vintage Rifle Trophy.

Nice barn but the light was just illumination.

Just like the 60s: Hard to get high enough.

Great light and background for a nice Cottonwood on the bluff over the beach near Marblehead. Katie's image making is getting much better.

Thinning the brush at Yosemite.

2011-07-29T19:28:00.000-07:00

A VERY good idea. The indians used to burn the whole valley floor off every few years. You can hardly see a thing as the valley floor has sealed up with trees just in my life time. Get out the saws!

Flattening and spotting prints.

2011-07-27T15:38:00.000-07:00

Delivering the Greenbriar Lake portfolio today. All 20X24s. I forget how large that is for some folks. 20X24 is a small piece of art but a large photograph. (I've got a roomy sink and plenty of big trays.) Takes several bites of my dry mount press and then some spotting. Not much dust but there are always some trees to paint shut and little white leaves to make disappear. Painting trees shut means making treelines and tops appear even and smooth by taking out the white spots where the sky shows through. Then I look for any white spot that catches my eye. By the time you get finished the whole thing looks even and settles down quite a bit.

The Blackfork Guide. Six things that happen in your photograph whether you want them to or not.

2011-07-26T14:52:00.001-07:00

The Blackfork ...

Six things that hap...

By Robert Langham III

Book Preview

Ansel Adams Special Edition Print.

2011-07-25T14:54:00.000-07:00

Always wanted a copy of this image and saw one floating by on Ebay. Sneed and I bought it for about 1/3 off the framed price at the Ansel Adams Gallery at Yosemite. Pretty good deal. It's made by Alan Ross from Ansel's Negative. He does a good job- better than Adams used to do. His assistants have printed these for years. Glad to get it. Gives you the urge to go to Yosemite though....

Print has been on the wall a few days. Gets better and better.

Blurbing.

2011-07-24T17:01:00.000-07:00

I ordered a copy. Ought to be here by the time I get back from Camp Perry two weeks from now. We'll see. As I would caution my students: anything worth doing is worth doing badly.

This has been an idea of mine for a long time. Glad to actually get through the process. I have several other ideas, but want the lessons from this one to sink in first.

PLEASE CLICK AN AD LINK BEFORE YOU GO!

Yosemite dangers.

2011-07-20T05:19:00.000-07:00

The Mist Trail up Little Yosemite past Vernal Fall, Liberty Cap, Mt Broderick and Nevada Falls. Gotta be careful especially in the spring when snowmelt swells the falls and creeks.

Deardorff back from the dead.

2011-07-13T18:09:00.000-07:00

Holy large format. Good to have these cameras back on the market. I've used mine for years with a new 8X10 being worked into the rotation now.

Ebay miracles.

2011-07-13T10:29:00.000-07:00

I found a Ebay store full of old press photos. All original prints from as far back as the 1930s. The photographers made the prints, the artists retouched them, the printers burned plates and put them on the presses and the photos were tossed in a pile. This is a little Kingfisher, heavily retouched. The foreground is painted out and some highlights and feathers outlined. It was a ferrotyped print. Still has the crop marks on the front and the date of publication on the back. May 11, 1939. Twelve bucks, delivered to my door. Quite an amazing artifact. I cornered it on a piece of foamcore and Katie has it presently in her Pilates studio.

Marchioni Tiltall Tripod.

2011-07-13T10:13:00.000-07:00

Long ago in a galaxy far, far away when I was a student at Sam Houston, eating at Damien's and hanging out in the photo lab all the time I had an aluminum tiltall tripod. We put everything on them, from Nikons to Calumet View cameras. Mine went to Yosemite at least twice and all over the West. I sold it to Doug Caldarera and bought a Gitzo, a Bogen, a Zone VI, another carbon-fiber Gitzo but I have always missed it. I've somehow still got the ring from the bottom of the shaft but I can't locate Doug to send it to him. If he still has it. They last forever.

I bought myself a nice replacement off Ebay. Probably won't use it much but it's nice to park an old view camera on. I should break it down and clean the threads. That's about all you can do to them. Seems to be in perfect working order.

Summer's chair.

2011-07-11T14:44:00.000-07:00

A flood took one and a thief took the other out of the side yard. Mostly they were used as perches for hunting Mockingbirds so birdlime was included with the booty for the thieves.
Katie replaced the chair with a plastic Chinese import off the stack at Brookshires grocery. 9.00. Not much, but you do have to go out and make that nine dollars.
It's been a visual feast on the green lawn of the side yard. In any light and any weather it seems to maintain it's presence. Even the eye flickering past will get a little visual candy-hit from the image. There are branches hanging off the big Pecan tree that I refuse to cut because of their visual interplay with the chair. Even walking in after dark you can sense it glowing. Quite a treat for the summer.

Summertime.

2011-07-01T19:31:00.000-07:00

Too hot to process film or paper. Tap water 85F. Started off with clear overhead hot skies. Uncomfortable conditions and bad light. It's gotten better in the evenings with the prime time coming at about 8:00 PM. Lots of digital going on, as always and working on book manuscript for a Blurb project.