Brasstown, NC

Here we are back in NC. This is Brasstown where there is a school where many people come to the school there and they teach all kind of crafts etc. I know they have a very good photography school. I am not sure if it is all year long or not.

Now to the other interest in Brasstown. They claim they are the opossum capital of the world and on New Years Eve the town swells to several thousand people with tents all around with people selling food and crafts. They have a show on the stage that is shown in the photograph. They catch a opossum and have him in a cage. This is just before midnight and all the people sit on the hillside opposite the stage and watch as they lower the cage right at the stroke of midnight. Then they let this famous opossum go and he just as fine as ever. I have talked to many people that live here in Tampa that know all about this. One man I know has a summer home in that area and he goes up every year for the "Opossum Drop". He says he would not miss it for anything. It is sure fun to find out all the interesting things that happen in various towns throughout the US.

Bed and Breakfast New England Style

WOW! Look at this spread. No wonder we come back with additional pounds.

Halloween

What neat decorations. Yes, I know this photograph should be held until Halloween but I am just trying to make an interesting blog. I also know I would probably loose this image if I did try and save it until Halloween. This was also up in New England.

Birch trees in color.

This is just a scene that almost drove my wife insane. I would see a photograph that I had to have and so I would stop along the side of the highway and walk until I spotted the perfect composition for that photograph.

One time in Minnesota during the month of December my aunt and uncle drove us out in the country, and I would yell, "Stop, there is a perfect photograph". I never did live that trip down, I was made fun of  every time I would see that aunt and uncle. Oh well, that is the life of a photographer.

Old house - colored leaves

This is a scene from one of our trips to New England back in (?).  I did a lousy job in keeping up with the dates and places I took my photographs. These cannot compare with the quality that I could obtain with digital or film now, there were color slides taken with a polarization filter which brought out the depth of the color in the leaves but you could not obtain saturation in the colors. The next few days will be slides from this trip.

My old studio camera

When I first started out in Tampa in 1965, this was my portrait camera an 8x10 NEGATIVE size camera. It was modified so the largest film I used was five by seven inch negative or four by five film. I also could adapt the five by seven sheet so that you could take two exposures per sheet of film. We hand developed all the film, as I recall, we could develop sixteen sheets of film at a time and this had to be in TOTAL darkness. That made you really think about each step in the process, you did nothing without thinking about what you were doing. Then when you had the client make the selection, I made 5x7 “proofs” for them to see. On the brides, I would make 8x10 “proofs” and for awhile, I picked out the best pose and made a 16x20 inch proof. Man, I just don’t know where I had the time to do this. This just goes to prove the statement ”I ain’t as young as I used ta was”.

Using this camera was a real chore when it came to photographing children as they move so fast and the area of being in focus was so critical, that many times I would have to reset the camera several times before being able to take an exposure. This camera did not have a little thing to look thru like your little home camera now has, you looked thru the camera just like when Ansel Adams or Yousef Karsh looked thru their view camera. It was a royal pain you know where.

When the  Hasselblad camera came into the scene, this camera gradually lost its usefullness but I thought you might like to see what studio photography was like when I first started out. I did not use this on candid weddings!

When I moved into the West Shore studio, I did not have a place to display this camera so a friend of mine wanted the camera and he refinished the whole camera and proudly has it in his home and has told many people about the history of the camera. Very nostalgic.

Deer blends into Forest

I have no idea where I took this scene, it probably was out camping many years ago. I remember the deer just melting into the brush and somehow I spotted her and I happened to have my big 450mm  lens on the camera and took this exposure. It was a slide taken in color with Ektachrome film. I converted this to black and white which made it much more dramatic. With the long lens, and wide aperture, notice the background how the focus drops off. I at times try to do this with my outdoor portraiture. This brings the attention right to the subject.