Global Climate Crisis work.
- Shooting with film has nothing to do with a yearning for anything retro; there are some instances where film still makes better photographs than digital cameras. Shooting with film is more labor intensive, but it gets the job done, especially with either tricky lighting or where I need a higher degree of nuanced information in the photo.
The past couple months have been occupied mostly with production work. I’m always a bit surprised at how labor intensive digital photography can be; I timed my Fellowship work so that a first wave of shooting could be done by early winter and I could spend the cold months holed up in my studio office doing the editing work on my computer. I kind of feel like the proverbial reclusive monk and am only missing the shaved head and robes.
One of the reasons I shot a few of these scenes with Kodachrome is that if you shot this with a digital camera, you'd get a lot of noise from the fog and the nuances of the feel of the winter fog would be minimized. Part of the global climate change project includes what could be perceived as mundane scenes of power lines. It's these seemingly ordinary scenes that we take for granted that is having a dramatic impact with changing our global climate.
From the Power Line series, which has to do with CO2 emissions and the global climate crisis. The other photos I'm working on right now are of coal fired power plants and the largest coal mine in North America in Wyoming. It's a sight to behold.
My biggest reality check with working on this Fellowship project is simply not teaching this semester. This is the first time that I haven’t taught for two consecutive semesters since 1991. Don’t get me wrong, I love teaching and even miss some of my students, but having the opportunity to work full-time on this Arts & Humanities Fellowship is pretty nice too.
This is the film from the Fuji TX Panoramic camera. It makes a photo that is twice as wide as a regular field of view.
I did a lot of the shooting in late fall and early winter. My most recent journey was to California to photograph power plants and wind farms in East Bay. I'd do the research on the power plants prior to my trips and map it out on Google Earth and plug all the coordinates into my GPS.
This GPS has been one of my best tools for this Fellowship project. Many of the sites I've visited were in obscure places that were challenging to find, and this GPS unit always took me directly to where I needed to go. I'm totally amazed at their accuracy.
I got this GPS in Aotearoa (New Zealand) two years ago when I was traveling the country via automobile. It did a splendid job of getting me around the country so I could concentrate on driving on the opposite side of the road and not have to navigate. It’s cool that these GPS units talk to you and tell you where to go so you don’t have to take your attention from the road. It has a most peculiar woman’s Australian accent and became a “She.” One of my stops in Aotearoa was at Massey University, where I spent a couple of days as a visiting artist. While having dinner with Robert Jahnke, the Head of the Maori Visual Arts Program, he suggested that perhaps it should be named “Matilda,” which is the name she now goes by.
At any rate, Matilda has been my guide on these Fellowship journeys, some of which were quite stormy and gloomy, which ironically enough, made for some excellent photographs.
This was my journey to Eastern Wyoming, where the largest coal mine in North America resides. It's run by the Peabody Company and it runs trainloads of coal around the clock, 24-7 to coal powered power plants all over America. It's quite the iconic place for the start of the 21st Century and the global climate crisis.
It was pouring rain most of the time, but I liked the look of the photos and appreciated tough cameras. This is one of my favorite digital cameras, the mighty Canon 5D MKII. It has a full-sized image sensor and shoots as fast as my pro film cameras. It kept right on shooting even though it got instantly drenched in just the few moments I was in the driving rain.
This has got to be my favorite camera ever. It's a Hasselblad medium format camera and I've used versions of it for over 30 years. It's still relevant in the digital age because of the impeccable negatives that are in turn scanned into the computer, so it's really a hybrid tool that crosses over to digital photography.
The cool part of the Hasselblad system is that it's likely the most modular camera system out there. I found this film back that is the "Moon Version" that was released to celebrate Hasselblad's contribution to the NASA Apollo missions. From a practical standpoint, I can tell at a glance that this is my film back that is loaded with infrared film.
Film processing is still fun; I'm splitting my work between digital photos and film. Each has its own distinct look and I like both for different feels conveyed. I don't have to pick one over the other and can take the best of what each has to offer. I really love the tactile nature of film and processing it by hand. In my opinion, it is important to turn off the computer and get away from the constant online buzz & image processing programs, and to give yourself quiet time to contemplate what's going on with not only your project, but with life in general.
Scanning negatives is definitely a high art, and I offer my thanks to the photo gods often... usually with coffee. This is a custom-made negative holder that holds the film flatter than the one that came with the scanner, which is so critical for sharply defined images.
Darth Scanner (play ominous soundtrack here). It's a workhorse of a scanner and does a fabulous job, especially with medium format negatives.
Part of the digital editing has to do with applying various filters to the photos. It's necessary because photos straight out of digital cameras are generally a bit soft and need to be sharpened, among other things.
Coal Fired Power Plant in MIchigan; the late afternoon light was surreal because the emissions put a thick haze in the atmosphere and the smokestack took on a gritty appearance. In my opinion, light is still what makes a photograph with an emotive punch; you don't have to intellectualize about a significant part of the meaning.
Over the winter I’ve been keeping busy with the production work involved with the project. Back in late December, the last rolls of Kodachrome were processed at the lab in Kansas, so I made sure I shot the last 21 rolls of Kodachrome as part of this project. I’ve got a fairly substantial backlog of work to do at the Research Park, where I have a very nice office with an awesome view of the mountains. I was just talking to a friend online about having an assistant. I told her that I actually need three; a minion, a henchman and a yes-man. But in reality, I like all of the aspects of the work, even the more mundane aspects like archiving the work, which can put you in a Zen-like state if done properly. Ommm. It can be very meditative, which is definitely a part of the creative process.
We can't talk about photography projects without mentioning coffee, now can we? I've got a new coffee maker, but it deserves it's own blog entry. I like coffee emissions much better than the CO2 ones on my journeys...
A sincere note of gratitude goes out to the Boise State University Arts and Humanities Institute and the Boise State University Division of Research for the Boise State University Arts and Humanities Fellowship, which grants faculty the opportunity to work on a fellowship project for a year (I am a Research Fellow for the 2010-2011 academic year).
Story & Photos Copyright Larry McNeil, All Rights Reserved, 2011
