How On Texas photographic essay came about
First of all the photographs shown here where all made in Texas.
I was given a chance back in 2011 to spend time looking over all of the transparencies I have made in my life and it was an eye opener. It was almost like an out of the body experience or possibly I developed a heighten awareness of so much imagery. What ever it was I have been working on the body of work on and off since.
Up until then I owned a 4 foot set of light tables but during a three month period I had an additional 8 foot making 12 feet total. Having this amount of viewing space made a big difference. For the first time ever I was able to see groupings, images that work together, themes and things I did not know went together. It was truly a revelation.
I am embarrassed to say I had never looked over all of my images in one concentrated effort…
I am embarrassed to say I had never looked over all of my images in one concentrated effort like what happened back in 2011. Part of the reason was of course I did not have enough light tables to view many slides at one time and maybe because of this it never occurred to me.
Well let’s come forward to March 2014 because something important happened. I was given a chance to use a 22 MP full frame DSLR camera and 50mm macro lens along with my old Beseler Slide Duplicator to make digital files of the archive. It is working great except it will take a lot of time to get the job done. But I am really enjoying it and learning a lot.
To complete the On Texas™ photographic essay I must look over all of the negatives both color and black and white. I will be looking for Texas related images and then edit them down to the best or the ones that work with the photographic essay.
I started looking over the 6X6cm
B&W negatives and discovered…
I started looking over the 6X6cm B&W negatives and discovered I will need to make contact sheets of each roll in order to understand facial and detail differences between negatives. Most of my contact sheets were destroyed by water damage back in 1993. That is the bad news but the good news John showed me a way to make digital contact sheets yesterday which should work fine. I will need to set up my copy stand and use one of my light tables to photograph each roll. Then make a digital positive as a contact sheet to look over. This will take some time to make happen.
I am not sure what will happen next but I am excited about the possibilities. Watch this website for updates and more. If you have suggestions or a good idea please let me know.
I have set up the light table and copy stand to make digital contact sheets and I have made about 50 new ones. This process is a great help in remembering the past work and getting a handle on going forward.
Byron
7-13-2014