12.14.09
Posted in China, Culture, Good Stuff, Photography, Travel at 11:01 pm by thomas
China officially recognizes 56 ethnic groups in the country, a fact that is easy to overlook when one travels through the major population centers which look dominantly Han. A trip into the countryside very often reveals a different picture, with smaller villages sporting very different faces and sometimes also different attire from the typical Chinese street clothes.
Here is a gorgeous look at the 56 ethnic groups (long page with big photos), from the western deserts to the eastern ocean shore and from Russian enclaves in the far north to tribal villages in the jungle near the Burmese border.
I wasn’t able to find much information about this amazing photo shoot, but it is obvious that serious funding and much work was involved in creating these unique tableaus – each of the photos must have taken several days to prepare and clearly much care was taken in selecting the members of each community and in encouraging them to put on their traditional clothes.
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12.18.08
Posted in Culture, Good Stuff, Photography, Travel at 11:42 pm by thomas
Richard Howe spent much of 2006 walking the streets of Manhattan, taking photos of ALL the street corners in town.
I love these kinds of projects that take on a mysterious life of their own. On first thought it sounds like a ridiculous idea. A photo of every street corner? But once you click your way into the galleries, and move from photo to photo and from corner to corner, suddenly it all starts to make sense.
The photos are presented in a widescreen format that lends itself well to the subject, with every street corner revealing a panoramic microcosm of life in Manhattan. There is yellow taxis everywhere, bike couriers, businessmen out for lunch, hustlers and shoppers.
Many of the corners have well-known brand stores in the downtown areas, but further along the island there are many unique local cornerstores and sometimes quite exotic businesses that add so much to the charme of the big city.
The galleries offer an autoplay function that invites to take effortless, dreamy strolls through parts of Manhattan that many tourists never visit.
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11.24.08
Posted in Culture, Modern Life, Photography at 10:15 pm by thomas
Just stumbled over this one: Google now hosts scans of more than a million LIFE photos from the 1800s up to today.
From a first glance, there are endless opportunities for research and just idle Googleing. Hundreds of images from the Yangtze in the 1940s, the San Francisco Conference, historic shots of the National Parks, American Diners… there’s lots of good stuff in here that has quite possibly never been published in the magazine.
It’s great to live in a time where more and more of these once unaccessible archives are opened up, never to be more than a few mouseclicks away.
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08.11.08
Posted in Good Stuff, Photography at 11:23 pm by thomas
Over on Sparkletack is a post about an amazing photo of the Bay Area… it’s an aerial photo taken in 1949 that shows not only all of San Francisco from 12000 feet, but in addition also stretches out all the way to Mt. Shasta.
We’ve just been up at Mt. Shasta and it’s a looong 250 mile-drive from the bay to the mountain – it’s almost unbelievable that there are ever clear days like these were you can see so far.
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05.29.08
Posted in Photography at 11:25 pm by thomas
Here’s another shot from the Mission of San Juan Bautista. There is a beautiful rose garden near the bell tower of the mission with some of the largest roses I’ve ever seen. Some of the flowers were as big as soup plates.
Photo taken with Kodak Medalist on Ilford Delta 100. Click for a larger view.
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05.28.08
Posted in Photography at 10:54 pm by thomas
On our road trip to east-central Nevada in 2006 we stopped at the Cathedral Gorge State Park for a break from driving and a little hike.
The park is in a very arid landscape where the sediment formations of an ancient lake bed have been shaped into grotesque towers and narrow canyons by millions of years of winter rains and summer heat. The “caves” near the entrance of the park are in fact deep and narrow canyons and this is where we wandered around for a while and took pictures.
Many of the walls of these formations look like melted wax or – more likely – extremely soft clay that is being washed down by rainfall and then hardens again for a little while when the sun comes out.
Walking through these tight canyons was very strange and disorienting, since the path often splits and many of the branches of the canyons end in little twisted dead-ends with overhanging, seemingly melting walls. It looks like a giant maze designed by the crazed assistant of Picasso.
Photos taken with Kodak Medalist on Ilford Delta 100. Click for a larger view.
Crossposted to MapSkip
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05.26.08
Posted in Photography at 11:21 pm by thomas
Still re-scanning old negatives… In late 2006 we traveled through large chunks of Nevada, mostly on Highway 50 and 93. This picture is from somewhere south of Ely in east-central Nevada, where mountain ranges rise to the east and west of the highway.
The main roads in this part of the country are excellent, but nearly always deserted. We stopped at this dirt track that seemingly disappeared into nothing somewhere near the mountains and had a quick picnic with sandwiches we had brought from Ely.
All around us the landscape was empty and quiet. It was the kind of silence that makes you welcome the odd pickup truck rushing past.
Photo taken with Kodak Medalist on Ilford Delta 100. Click for a larger view.
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05.24.08
Posted in Photography at 11:16 pm by thomas
I’ve posted a different photo from the Spruce Tree House in the Mesa Verde National Park before, but during my recent re-scanning campaign I found this very nice shot of the same place.
I have fond memories of our stay in Mesa Verde. It was late in the season and some of the sights were already closed in expectation of winter. The park was nearly deserted with only a handful of tourists on the loop road and small groups of deer strolling freely along the roads and parking areas.
The Indian ruins in Mesa Verde are simply stunning. Most of the little communities were built into naturally hollowed out areas along the cliff faces in the steep canyons that run through the mesa, and many of them are hard to reach even with ladders and metal stairs in place of the old climbing paths that the original inhabitants used.
On this specific autumn day the light was glorious and it bathed the ruins in a flood of yellow and gold. We will be back another time, I am sure…
Photo taken with my Kodak Medalist on Ilford Delta 100. Click for a larger view.
Crossposted to MapSkip
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05.21.08
Posted in Photography at 9:35 pm by thomas
Every now and then I go back and re-scan some older negatives that haven’t received the full-sized medium format scan treatment yet.
Almost three years ago we went on an epic road trip through a large part of Arizona and Utah and among many other amazing places we spent a day in Monument Valley. It was a glorious morning with a quite remarkable sunrise over the distinctive rock formations of the valley.
We drove along the self-guided road that passes through the park and took many pictures. I had brought my Kodak Medalist, but for some reason it felt even more cumbersome than usual to use, so I only shot one roll of 620 film on that morning, which was probably a mistake since the wide landscape with the harsh lighting conditions was perfect for the Medalist’s lens. Here is one of the eight shots on that roll.
Photo taken with my Kodak Medalist on Ilford Delta 100. Click for a larger view.
Crossposted to MapSkip
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05.18.08
Posted in Photography at 9:20 pm by thomas
I took the Kodak Medalist on our trip down to San Juan Bautista and shot one roll around the mission. This was the first picture that stood out when I looked at the negatives and I’m very happy with it.
We were at the mission building a little bit late in the afternoon when the other tourists had already left and the mission was closed for visitors, so it was easy to set up this shot without having to worry about other people walking into the frame. Since I only have eight shots on a roll with the Medalist, I’m always very slow in setting up to make sure I’ve crossed all the t’s and dotted all the i’s before I hit the shutter.
Shot taken with my Kodak Medalist on Ilford Delta 100. Click for a larger view.
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