Machine Shops, Shadows and Tools

It is about time to get back in here and write some thoughts down.  Working where people really work for a living, use their hands, tools, and machinery to create and repair, to carve useful equipment out of chunks of steel gives me an opportunity to photograph objects that have a human story, presence without even seeing the guys that do the work.  You can feel the touch, the scraps, the digs and know that someone has put time and energy into what they do; what they do that is not always clean and easy.  

The light in the shop I have been shooting is wonderful as if filters through dusty floors and work surfaces. Light slips through old holes in the wall, put there for some long forgotten reason; it comes through cracks in the ceiling, through old foggy windows, and creeps through the edges of large, rolling doors.  Nothing feels brightly light, yet, you become keenly aware of the soft play of light and the quality that it gives everything in the building.

The current few photos are what has come from one session and that only an exploration of a part of the shop.  Thanks Craig for letting me in.

The World is Really Black and White

I am lately convinced that I should be working in all black and white whether I am in the darkroom or sitting at the computer.  It has also come to me that I can work in more than one medium – film and digital – and the timing and use of either medium can be determined some by work local and some be the end use that I have for the work.  There is a certain satisfaction with seeing a finished print, either from the epson printer or as it comes up in the developer tray.  There is certainly more sense of ‘magic’ watching that print begin to appear out of the depths of the developer.  That to me has far more appeal than any digital image making will.

But, alas, there is a tinge of laziness, greed, the need for instant gratification, in me that digital images seem to satisfy.  That is the pull to digital (it is not the cameras that’s for sure – I would rather feel the ‘blad in my hands, look through the big view finder than struggle with the little window on the DLSR – wake up Nikon!)