Watching a bewildering world from the middle of nowhere
Click here for high-resolution version.
This photo has been tweaked in Photoshop, using the “Levels” control. The color here is all real and is just as the camera saw it, but the overall darkening of the image in Photoshop brightens the colors and intensifies the luminosity. The view is from an upstairs front window.
Two years ago, I wrote a post, with photos, about my Nikon Model S microscope. People who are Googling for this classic microscope often find my post, and it has been quite popular. In 2016, I did not have an “episcopic illuminator” for the microscope. I recently bought one on eBay. These devices for Model S microscopes seem to be fairly rare and don’t come up for sale often — at least not at a decent price.
An episcopic illuminator is a device that lights the specimen from above. What you see in the microscope is light reflected from the specimen. The opposite of this is “diascopic” illumination. In diascopic illumination, the light is below the specimen. What you see in the microscope is light that is transmitted through the specimen.
As you might imagine, both types of illumination are sometimes used together.
Somehow, my Nikon D2X camera seems to have infected me with a fetish for optics. Like my Nikon D2X camera, the Nikon Model S microscopes are now considered largely obsolete by professionals. But collectors and hobbyists snap them up for their quality and their continuing usefulness.
Unfortunately, the through-the-microscope photos here are of poor quality, because they were shot with an iPhone held over the microscope’s eyepiece.
A friend in Black Mountain is experimenting with making tinctures. The alcohol is organic grape alcohol. The ingredients include all sorts of herbs and flowers. Also, below is the film version of the recent daffodils shot.
These are both film shots using Fuji Velvia 100 reversal film in the Mamiya RB67. The tinctures shot is with a 90mm K/L lens; the daffodils shot is a 250mm K/L lens. The tinctures shot is at f/32 with an exposure time of 45 seconds.
Click for high resolution version
I went on a road trip to Asheville earlier this week, and while I was there I shot portraits of my oldest friend, whom I have known for almost 50 years. I shot the earlier portrait, below, around 1984. It was shot with a Yashica camera, medium format. The new portrait was shot with my Mamiya RB67 film camera.
Nature is not fair when she gives out good looks. Some people have all the luck. But if you take care of yourself and live an artist’s life, it’s remarkable how nature’s gifts will stay with you.
A coal train near Cotton Hill, West Virginia. Source: Jason Bostic, Flickr
As I mentioned recently, one of my New Year’s resolutions is to go on more hiking and picture-taking expeditions. When I made the resolution, I was vaguely aware that I wanted to focus on the Appalachian highlands. But I also wanted to get a bit more order and purpose into it — that is, to make a project out of it.
I think my plan is to follow the coal.
About 15 miles away, at Belews Creek, North Carolina, is the Belews Creek Steam Station, a coal-fired generating plant operated by Duke Energy. The plant burns massive amounts of coal and produces massive amounts of coal ash. The environmental consequences of this are a whole different story. But that whole different story also figures into my political and environmental activities in these parts. But back to the coal.
The coal that feeds the Belews Creek Steam Station comes from (where else?) West Virginia. The coal gets here from West Virginia on very long and very heavy coal trains. The route the coal trains follow is not hard to figure out using Google Earth and other online sources. The train line’s path from the steam station to West Virginia runs like this: Belews Creek (North Carolina), Madison, Stoneville, Martinsville (Virginia), Ferrum, Rocky Mount, Roanoke, Christiansburg, Ripplemead, Narrows, Princeton (West Virginia), and thence into a complex network of rail lines that bring coal out of the West Virginia mountains.
Railways (and trains) are remarkably photogenic. Most railway lines were built many decades ago. They tend to follow rivers, traveling through wild places to link old industrial cities. Their routes show us where industry was concentrated back in the days when the U.S. had industry.
So the photographic project I’m proposing for myself is to follow the coal train from Belews Creek (North Carolina) to Kopperston (West Virginia) or thereabouts. Such a project would take time — a couple of years, probably — with each segment requiring a separate road trip.
We’ll see!
If you’re interested in looking at railway lines in Google Earth (railway lines in the U.S., anyway) then with this link, you can find .kmz files for Google Earth. When loaded into Google Earth, the files draw the routes of the railways in Google Earth for most American railway lines. If you click on a railway, you can see who owns it, plus a bit of the railway’s history.
The Google Earth screen shot below shows the Belews Creek Steam Station (circled in red); the little town of Walnut Cove (circled in green); and the route the coal train follows toward Roanoke, Virginia (the red arrow). This train line dates back to 1889 and now belongs to Norfolk Southern Railway.
I plan to start shooting at Walnut Cove and the Belews Creek Steam Station and then, over time, work my way toward the coal mines of West Virginia. Following the train lines with Google Earth should help me zoom in on the most photogenic areas.
Having spent an embarrassing amount of money lately on a film camera, lenses, and other stuff necessary for film photography, I certainly had noticed on eBay that some of the best deals and best prices were from Japanese dealers. I came across a portrait lens that looked so perfect and was so reasonably priced that I bought it in spite of my concerns about doing business outside the country. I figured that delivery would take forever, but I was willing to wait for a lens like that.
Much to my surprise, six days after I ordered the lens on eBay, it was delivered to my door — special delivery — by the U.S. Postal Service. I have never received an eBay item that was so carefully and neatly packed. Best of all, there was a little bird in the package, made of folded green paper.
Now I feel ashamed for not seeing that America does not have a patent on good business. We Americans may even be slipping, since my expectations are so low, which makes me wonder if the rest of the world is wary of doing business with us.
The package was sent from the Japanese post office to the U.S. Postal Service, using a service called Express Mail Service. It’s trackable and insured, and there seemed to be no delay in customs.
I’m still in the testing and learning state with the new camera, but I should have some film photos before long.
I’ve had some distractions and haven’t posted for more than a week, but I’ll be back soon.
One of my distractions has been getting myself set up for 120-format film photography. That included buying a film scanner. Having a film scanner enabled me to scan some of my slides from a trip to India in 1993.
⬆︎ Dutch friends who looked after me and helped me manage my culture shock. They had been in India before.
The first roll of film from the Mamiya RB67 has been processed. The camera certainly works, but I have some stuff to learn. For a first roll, it wasn’t bad. Here are two of the ten shots. It’s available light, shot on a table beside a north-facing window, camera on a tripod. They’re experiments for portraiture, of which I’d like to do much more.
This was Kodak Tri-X film, processed and scanned by thedarkroom.com, 127mm lens.
