A couple of weeks ago, on one of my writing breaks, I walked up the stairs to check out what Ann was doing. On her monitor was an image she was working on and we started talking about the developing process. From that chance encounter we’ve since periodically talked about developing images so I figured it’s about time to put my (read: our) thoughts down in words and to share them with you.

It took me a while to calm down enough to write this post (something one might question given the title), though I must confess I’m still not quite over it. Let’s just say that, despite all our best efforts - to include moving to Portugal - we still didn’t manage to totally escape what I’ve been calling the Anglo-Saxon disease.

Ann had been looking at (and working on) some old images, so I thought I’d take a mental break from brief writing this week and do the same. I picked a year - 2015 - and picked a dated but unnamed folder that had a bunch of images in it. I decided to dive in and see what was there and then pick a single image to work on. Let’s see what Yosemite NP had to offer me this week.

Sometimes when you’re out and can’t quite find something grand to photograph, you settle on something simple and try to enjoy the craft of photography. On our first trip out to the desert SW, a bit west of Moab in Canyonlands NP, I was faced with just that situation. Looking back at that image recently I realized there was more there than I’d first thought so I decided to develop it with fresh eyes.

Some things are almost irresistible for a photographer; well, at least for me. And the opportunity to photograph on an old farm with dilapidated vehicles and well-aged structures was just too good to pass up when I first stated lugging around a 4x5 camera. Come check out one of my first 4x5 color transparency (slide) photographs.

As I noted in the White Sands post, the Army gave me plenty of opportunity to travel. Imagine going to language refresher training in Provo, Utah and your carry-on airline luggage is a 12”x18”x14” white carrying case with a rail-type 4x5 camera, 24 film holders, two lenses, a light meter, and a couple of boxes of film, and your check-in bag is a military duffel bag (the only thing I had that was long enough) with your clothes for two weeks wrapped around your huge wooden tripod with the tripod head removed. That was me. Check out whether it was worth it.

Apologies for the juvenile nature of the caption, but there were no grassy knolls in the photographs and, while not quite illegal, grass isn’t actually legal in Portugal (it’s complicated and has more to do with how the country has decided to treat drug addicts [not by locking them up, but by offering addiction services] than with the substance itself), so I had to resort to a saying I used a lot growing up in the late 60’s and early 70’s . . . not that I’m much more mature today than then, but . . . to attract your attention to the theme Ann and I used in selecting the images to develop and print this weekend. That theme is grass.

One of the things being in the Army gave me was an opportunity to travel. And while I didn’t always have my camera gear with me, sometimes I did. Check in to find out about one of the most incredible 24-hour periods (note - I did not say “day”) of photography I’ve ever had.

I guess being retired and locked down at home has some advantages. Like culling through your old images to shrink the gigabyte size of your Capture One files. At least that’s what Ann’s been doing lately while I’m working (all along totally ignoring my suggestion to work on some images for printing - avoidance behavior, even in retirement). Well, the other day I get an e-mail from Ann with the subject line “Wild Water at Brice Creek” and a photograph of me from 2014. Looking at the image, I immediately knew I had a corresponding image and therefore a shooting the shooter post.

Zanzibar. It’s perhaps the most exotic sounding place I’ve been to. Baghdad might compete for that honor, but I didn’t have the freedom of movement there to add to the mystery of the name, and its recent history leaves much to be desired. I guess Zimbabwe falls into that category too given I went camping in the wild while there and had an elephant walk thorough my camp during dinner, hippos wandering around my tent at night and hyenas destroying our neighbor’s cooler. But I went to Stone Town, Zanzibar with the express purpose of photographing and despite spending only one night there, it was a success. So much so, I’ve started the process of building a portfolio of the trip.

Call me a glutton for punishment, or just plain stupid. Or maybe blame it on that determination I developed from playing soccer, “So what if they kicked our ass last time, it doesn’t mean they’ll do it again!” (Yeah, I know you’re probably thinking, “Well, it doesn’t mean they won’t do it again . . . and remember, that’s what they did last time.”). But fresh after that demoralizing defeat that was my futile effort to scan 4x5 images, the very next day I decided that we should try printing for the first time ever on our new printer. Given some of the frustrating printing experiences we’ve had in the past, it really was a risk. Fortunately, things turned out a bit better than my scanning disaster. Quite a bit better.

I didn’t anticipate posting another musings blog post so soon after the last one, but a couple of things have arisen that deserve an update. I guess the primary trigger was another sizing mistake. Can you guess what it was?

REM has a song on Lifes Rich Pageant [not a punctuation error] (arguably one of their best albums) called Begin the Begin. Beginnings. It’s sometimes difficult to know when you’re in a new beginning. All too often it’s only because you’re looking back in time that you realize that’s what it was. Join us for a discussion about a new beginning . . . or not.