Double-Exposed Orchid (March 10, 2024)

 

High Desert Mirages, New Mexico (March 2023)

 

More Imaginary Kansas, Fall 2022

 

October 2022: Kansas Landscape

 This image of a landscape in Northeast Kansas was created on location, using the multiple-exposure function on a Nikon D810 with a 35mm lens. Two exposures were made in succession, with a 180 degree camera rotation between them. 

This is a Kansas landscape in miniature; this is an Imaginary Kansas.

October 2022

Top frame: In-camera double exposure, using 35mm lens on full-frame 35mm DSLR

Bottom frame: In-camera double exposure, combined with another in-camera double exposure of same subject made minutes earlier, using same equipment as top frame

September 3, 2022: Double-Exposure (in-camera)

 

Cloudscapes (double-exposures), August 6, 2022

 

Three Different Visual Strategies/Responses to the Same Subject: Orchid

These three photographs were made using the same camera, in the same room, utilizing the same subject: my very patient and always willing subject, the plant I lovingly have named Lazarus, after the biblical figure who rose from the dead. Lazarus the Orchid came into my life  three or four years ago. This orchid has returned from what I believed was death, to bloom and flower again, over and over. This re-flowering, this rebirth, always inspires me to observe and celebrate and create a new round of photographs.

The top image is the most visually conventional, on the surface, yet even it is a couple of steps away from a traditional photograph: looking closely, the viewer detects ghostly double images within the frame.

The second image was made with a pinhole "lens", rather than an actual glass lens. The long exposure time, thirty seconds (due to the tiny f162 aperture through which light strikes the sensor), resulted in a bit of softening of the floral detail.

The third and final image is also a pinhole photograph; it varies from the second image due to a sense of overall Dionysian energy and fecundity, almost from a bug's-eye perspective.

 

 

Process

This first image is a double-exposure, and has been fully processed from a single, in-camera RAW file into a final TIFF after editing. I then made the reduced size JPEG you are looking at for internet purposes.

 I've included two photographs here: The smaller photo is more-or-less a straight out of camera image with minimal processing. The larger photograph is edited using, post-digital-processing and what I can only call "handwork" in Lightroom and Photoshop. The camera I use, a full-frame DSLR, allows for the production of multiple exposures on the same file, producing a RAW original.This image was a double exposure. I've done a bit of work increasing contrast, applying both minus clarity AND plus dehaze, and slight variations to a magenta, blue, and yellow color channels. I also tried split toning with color to add a color cast to the shadows and highlights. I still consider the final, processed image to be the truer expression of my internal, pre-conceived ideal. The expressive power of the image is finalized and made manifest in the 'digital darkroom', just as in days past the true vision of the analog photographer was made "real" in the analog darkroom. My photographs are not ABOUT the process, but they can't exist without it. That is why I occasionally share these details, since I normally prefer to speak only of the 'content', however one defines that slippery term. For me content refers more to intentions than objects.

Kansas, Farmland with Powerplant, November 2020

 

Exploding Orchidbomb (October 14, 2020)

This image is a composite created from an original single photograph of an orchid. This source image was a multiple exposure of the orchid. This original source image was multiplied into individual identical copies. These nine copies were divided into three sets of three images each; each set was a row of three images in a horizontal line. These sets were either rotated vertically, or left alone. These sets were then arranged on top of each other, with each row laid horizontally upon the row beneath it. These rows were adjusted in Photoshop in layers slightly using the move tool to position them within the compositions vertical axis. A slight amount of blending occurred to smooth out edges, mostly at print output size viewing option.
 

Kansas Landscape, October 2020

 The tree which serves as the source image of this photograph stands alone in a carefully manicured suburban housing development. Its powerful, ancient, and mysterious presence does not seem diminished by its mundane surroundings; instead it appears to magnify its weird isolation within a theatrical, scripted space. As I left the golden fields surrounding this titan, I felt a malevolent presence as though this tree, and its family, is not happy with us.

Venus Eye-Trap, June 2019

Mechanical Snowflake, March 2019

February 10, 2019

Cosmic Egg, November 2018

Florida Paranormal, 2018

Green Dionysus, October 2018

Alchemical Sphere, February 2018

As the Old God Collapses, the New God Emerges, January 2018

"Nothing is new under the sun." Whether the subject is religion, science, or art, all new ideas emerge from the ones left behind. Knowledge, like a river, flows forward from a previous source. New civilizations grow from the cities preceding them; the burnt ashes of forgotten or dying cultures can feed and fertilize new growth. Consider the truth of this statement and remember it as you look at this collection of photographs I have entitled "As the Old God Collapses, the New God Emerges."

This visible, "natural" world we spend our days in is a reflection of a greater reality. As Manly P. Hall stated in his book The Secret Teachings of All Ages (first published in 1928): "The physical nature of the universe is receptive; it is a realm of effects. The invisible causes of these effects belong to the spiritual world. Hence, the spiritual world is the sphere of causation; the material world is the sphere of effects; while the intellectual - or soul - world is the sphere of mediation."

The artist can be a mediator between these spheres, creating images which are reflections and transmissions from a greater reality beyond the clouded spectrum of everyday, half-conscious life.

These images were made from a single double-exposure. In other words, two distinct photographs were combined to create a new source image.

While visiting a large greenhouse/conservatory, I made two photographs. The first photograph was a close-up photo of a large, tropical leaf. The next image was a photo of a different plant, from a greater distance. These two photographs were combined. This new double-exposure became the new source image from which this series was created.