Austin, TX

Best image I’ve made so far this year.

Joe Kelly Obenhaus, 2004, Austin, TX

I just found out that my friend Joe K. passed away two days ago. It upset me more than I anticipated. He developed Alzheimer’s Disease a few years back, and was already having memory problems when I worked with him at the Texas House of Representatives, so I can’t say I was completely surprised to hear of his passing. Still, I immediately felt guilty I didn’t seek him out over the last couple of years. It’s probably been 3 or 4 years since I last saw him. He was such a great little buddy. I’ll miss him a lot.

Funny thing happened today. I was out driving around Georgia shooting with my new Hasselblad. Oh, I didn’t mention that? I’ll come back to it. Anyway, I was on this two lane road in Conyers, Georgia, and I realized that I’d been there before. I came to this big abandoned entry/gate to what used to be a ranch of some type, and I parked my truck to take a picture. As I was framing things up, this older gentleman drove up in one of those ATV/small truck vehicle things and asked me if I’d like a ride up to the property. It wasn’t his, but he new the owners and had spent a lot of time up there.

He showed me around and let me get out and take pictures, then took me over to his own property, introduced me to his longhorns, two donkeys and goat, who was actually as affectionate as my dogs. Turns out Mr. Martin is actually from Alamo, Texas, down in the valley (not to be confused with San Antonio, where The Alamo resides), but he left Texas in 1944. He filled me in on quite a bit of Texas history; actually, we talked mostly about Texas.

I’ll be developing the film soon, and hopefully have some usable shots. Until I get my new light meter, I’ll be metering with my Digital Rebel, which is essentially what this shot is… a metering shot before I took his portrait with the Hasselblad. But I think it’s nice, and fortunately I shot it in RAW.

So about the Hasselblad. I applied for a Graduate PLUS loan, mostly for the Hasselblad, but also for some other stuff. It finally came in recently, and I won an auction on eBay for a full Hasselblad 500C/M outfit, complete with an 80mm CF lens, non-metered 45 degree prism and two A12 film backs. I ended up spending a few hundred dollars less than I had planned, and so with the additional money, I’m going to buy a top of the line Sekonic light meter. No more metering with a digital camera. I also bought a great Canon bag for everything tonight at Best Buy, which is really solid. AND I’ve begun ordering all of the chemistry for wet-plate collodion. It’s an exciting time.

Another image from the roof for a project.

You can see it in B&W as well.

This was the tank that could’ve passed as a giant Imax screen the way it was presented. It was pretty impressive.

Taken at the Georgia Aquarium, which cost WAY too much to enter.

I love my darkroom. It took two years, but when we moved I had a chance to set it up again, and I took the time to lay it out like I wanted. Granted, it’s a bit of a mess right now, but the extra enlarger is a great place to put my paper box while I’m printing.

This little collage was actually pretty fun to throw together. So sloppy and easy. I gotta’ admit, I just threw it together to let you know I’m still alive. I have a scanner, but what I really need is a copy stand so I can just shoot digital images of the big prints I’ve been making.

It’s the drive-in outside of Midland. I took some pictures of this with my Graflex 6×9 in B&W, so I hope they turn out better.

This is one of only a few images I’ll be posting from this past weekend. I took a road trip to the area where I was born… a place I haven’t even visited in about 13 years.

I was born in Odessa, Texas, which is very much in West Texas… the desert, for most of you. It had an oil-driven economy, and that’s why my family was there. My dad was transferred to Nigeria (in Africa) in 1988, and it was at that point that my mom, brother and I moved to my parents’ home town or Orange, where I spent the rest of my youth.

I stayed in Midland during this trip, with my kindergarten teacher and her husband. But I drove the 20 miles over to Odessa a couple of times to see the place I had so many memories of. I took many pictures, but they were mostly digital. This particular one was shot in RAW mode, so I at least had that in mind for certain shots I figured I would post here. More information about my trip will be posted soon at CrazyWalker.

As this place has obviously been a bit devoid of new photos lately, I thought I’d do what most others do at this point: post an old photo that I probably wouldn’t have posted otherwise. This is just a shot where Robert was playing around before the final 4×5 shot, seen previously on this photo blog.

After a meeting for my upcoming show (details soon, I promise) I glanced out the window of the gallery and saw this house. But what actually caught my attention in the first place was the beautiful, dirty, single pane glass the windows had.

I bought this 4×5 view camera several weeks ago for super cheap. It came with a lensboard, but no lens, so I was experimenting with different large format lenses I have, but couldn’t find one that was the right size for the hole. So I was playing around with a magnifying glass only to find that it actually worked. And if you’re familiar with my large format work, you’ll realize that the loss of focus in the edges is hardly a downfall of using this. So I taped it to the inside of the lensboard, and here you have it. I have yet to shoot any polaroid with it, and I don’t feel like developing sheet film (nor do I have the supplies for that right now), so I’ll post the first image when I do shoot it.