How Much Have We Accomplished?

[John Layton]

So…how much (or little) has everyone accomplished, photographically speaking, during this pandemic?

OK - I’ll go first: Very little actually. Seems that I’ve been doing mostly home improvement projects/maintenance, and rebuilding my car. Very easy/tempting to give myself a retrospective kick in the pants.

Indeed there have been many nights (typically after midnight) when I’ll wake up and start to perseverate about “wasting such a great opportunity” to create some new work, try new techniques, and/or think up and engage in new ways of promoting my work generally.

But this has been a very strange, often very stressful year, and I guess it would be pretty accurate to sum up this year as having been one of more “acquiescence and acceptance,” than of regeneration and renewal.

More recently though, I have begun processing and printing again - starting with some new work from this year’s single, successful travel experience (our yearly trip to Monhegan Island), and have very recently photographed some still lifes in my basement studio, preliminary prints from which look promising. More importantly I feel freshly motivated…I can feel myself (despite what still lies ahead) “getting up off the mat” once again - and thank goodness!

[Eric Woodbury]

I've made a few images, but not many. I did some printing for my daughter. Tried out a new paper. Started a photo essay, but found the camera I needed to do it was dead, so it's out for repair. I took out an old enlarger from my darkroom and put in another that I've 'souped up'. And my new 10x12 LED light source is almost done.

Not enough printing or imaging, but doing okay at the miscellaneous.

[Jody_S]

I tried out a couple of new lenses on 4x5 at the very beginning, but I haven't even developed them yet. In my defense, we had a death in the family (FiL), and I had to clean up their house, tend the yard, sell it, and move disabled MiL in with us, so I've been busy.

[Alan9940]

I've made a handful of images, but no where near my normal output. We've got wide open spaces out here in the desert southwest so getting one's self out there alone is easy, as long as you stay off the more common trails. Before the pandemic, every so often I'd make multi-day trips requiring overnight stays; nowadays, my destination needs to be within one day drive to and back. No worries though...someday we'll all be back out there doing our thing!

[lenicolas]

Don’t beat yourself up for not doing enough. This year is traumatic, and even just keep on keeping on without losing too much of your sanity is an achievement in itself.

I read somewhere that the people who flourished under confinement/lockdown/social distancing were only showing how self centered they really are. ;)
They meant it as a joke but still...

That being said I feel like I’ve had a decent year, photography-wise.
No street, no travel... I went all-in on portraits.
A year ago I was a hardcore documentary guy, now I’m just as excited about artificial light and studio setups. It’s just another tool to tell a person’s story.

Just today I built a guerilla studio downtown and shot a bunch of people who have been furloughed because of the second (third?) wave of the plague.
The portraits are to be printed and hung in the windows of the shut down businesses, to draw attention to the human factor of all this, rather than abstract talk of numbers and bankruptcy.
209983

A year ago I only used my Hassy with color film and paid to have it souped and scan.
Now I have a fridge full of B&W film and I do processing and scanning at home.
209984

One last thing, I started following David Alan Harvey on Patreon.
He gave out 4 assignments this year, which he then critiques.
This is not where my best work this year has come from, but if you’re struggling with setting your own goals and challenging yourself, it’s nice to have these assignments.

[BrianShaw]

My progress has been slow but steady. As time permits I bring an old camera out of “storage”, load it with film, and expose. Probably my biggest advances have been on the processing side and I've been processing a lot of film that otherwise would have been sent to a lab. I’m still working full time through the pandemic... staring at a computer and conference calls from home rather than the office. Only extra time I seem to have gained is the time formerly spent sitting in freeway traffic while commuting.

But I’m still waiting to make any “worthy” images!

[revdoc]

Quite a lot, in hindsight.

Started mixing my own developers and fixer from scratch. Finally worked out a reliable method for enlarging negs onto lith film. Found a good paper and process for vandykes. Played around with macro for the first time. Almost nothing in large format, but quite a lot (for me) 35mm. Progressed with carbon transfer, to the point I can make prints, but not good prints.

Mostly, though, just glad we made it this far.

[Tin Can]

Survival is always paramount. Today listened to an adaptation of Norse Saga. Good advice. Rereading Steinbeck and Speech: “Now is the winter of our discontent”BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56973/speech-now-is-the-winter-of-our-discontent)

Realized I will not be using my trailer and will sell it. It was to be a mobile Darkroom and Camera, 20 years in the making with 2 trailers. National emergencies both times.

I will be home well past the duration of the Plague, hopefully...

Made UVA Print Box, Darkroom is better now. Waiting for another CAMERA!

Time is moving very fast for me, seems like Groundhog Day (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107048/) every day The movie!



BUT I always have a plan. More studio work, working a set today.

[jp]

Very productive in terms for exercise, fresh air, and shooting (film use). I'm still developing stuff from months ago and only scanning/posting things from my very productive springtime and summer.

Not so productive in terms of projects.... I've still got on the backburner the LED enlarger head project. Haven't really printed much. I work an essential business, and we're busier than ever and I come home and while I might be up for developing a batch of film or scanning something, I'm not up for major projects in the evening.

[Vaughn]

Somewhat busy, with a winter coming that I am sure I will make the most of my powers to procrastinate. Seriously behind cataloging and storing negatives...need more clamshell boxes for 5x7, 8x10, and something that will work well with 11x14 negatives. I just developed a drum full of 5x7s (taken late October), but have many nights worth of 11x14 negs (from Feb) to tray process. Between storage and development needs, it's cramping my desire to expose more film...but certainly not for going out and enjoying the light.

I am working on the room I use to store and sort negatives. Making room for the various camera systems -- which also entails getting all my film holders back in order. That is out-of-hand. I need a day (or three) of holder cleaning, remarking, and proper storage of holders. It starts to snowball pretty quick.

Then there is the print storage and matting/framing room...can't even cut a mat right now! It would not take long, but it would entail moving boxes into other room(s), and so on!

First world problems...

[Bernice Loui]

Month of October, over 40 sheets of 5x7 film including engagement pictures of daughter and hubby to be..
Some were done with a 12" Kodak Portrait outdoors (ND filter required). The Sinar Norma got used quite a lot last month including the Jobo.

If the cameras goes out, about 6 to 12 sheets of 5x7 film is used. Quite a few indoor architecture images made a few using the 72mm Super Angulon XL.

Then there are a LOT more images made with the Canon digital.


Bernice

[Drew Wiley]

I take a few shots every week with various formats. Just got done printing a couple of masked 8x10's negs from last week. Plenty to do. Should probably get back to the salt mines of drymounting before the weather turns damp, but needed a break.

[Michael R]

One of the reasons I normally work so slowly is that I need to find time windows when the odds of people getting into my shots are lower. In the spring when the population was most frightened I took the opportunity to photograph more often because there were generally far fewer people around. I was able to cross a few very difficult pictures off my list, which was nice.

[Two23]

There have been no restrictions in my region, but my routine has been hampered. Usually my wife & I take three or four long distance trips per year (often overseas), but not this year. We've only managed three "safe-cations" to the remote corners of the Northern Plains, all within a day or so drive of our home. I took the month of May off and used the time to explore a tiny sliver of South Dakota that's between I-29 and the Minnesota border, roughly 25x160 miles (4,000 square miles.) I took a number of photos with my Chamonix 4x5 on FP4+ as I worked my way north. Since then I've been working my usual 40 hours/week, but have been shooting wet plate every weekend. I've gotten decent at it now, not great. I've also bought a nice 9x12cm ICA Adoro Tropen folding camera and have been shooting dry plates with it. Really, if anything my photography has increased this year. I just wish my company would let me take another month off.:D


Kent in SD

[JMO]

Prior to this year I had gone on two month-long road trips with my LF and MF and digital cameras, to all corners of the US (and several NPs), over each of the previous 5 years since I retired from my work career, plus many other more local LF explorations. When the first lockdown happened in mid-March, it was about the time I had finally (after 2-3 years of procrastination) gotten my table-top or still life studio outfitted and going in my basement, so that serendipitous timing turned out pretty fortunate. Other than some photography in my home town area at different times since March, I've spent a lot of time learning and enjoying the use of my Linhof Kardan Master GTL 4x5 and some LED studio lighting in my basement, and (also finally) doing some B&W film speed testing with a couple of developers (to refine my technique). I can't say I have yet produced any personal all-time favorite still life images, but like anything I feel one needs to put in the time and effort on the learning curve, and be patient. However, in 2021 I look forward to getting back out on the road trips after my wife and I have gotten COVID vaccine jabs, as it is a personal priority for both of us to see more of the US and take time to enjoy such adventures. My landscape photography passion (more and more with LF) provides a strong motivation to get out to NPs and other scenic or historic areas of interest, and one never knows how long your health will hold out - so I look forward to better times.

Back to this COVID annus horribilis, I feel these two still life images taken in my basement are favorites.

210001
Blue gum eucalyptus bowl made by Larry Zeidman in Hawi, Hawaii. (Linhof Kardan Master GTL 4x5, Delta, Doctor Wetzler APO-Germinar 300mm lens, f32.67 @ 125s)

210002
Daum urn (Linhof KM GTL 4x5, TMX, 210mm Nikkor AM-ED macro, f22.5 @ 38s)

[Alan Klein]

I took up 4x5 photography in January right before covid started. I've made some headway (pictures in Flickr), but not a lot. I send film out for development so no issues with darkroom. I'm still working on a video slide show of a vacation I took a year ago (digital camera) in LA, San Diego and Las Vegas. Wasted a lot of time in the forums. :)

[Chuck Pere]

I haven't been out taking photos much but have been spending time editing my growing stacks, boxes and folders of loose prints. Most have been looked at in past edits. I divide them into new piles marked best, good, possible (better, medium and low), crop for those that have interesting small parts of the image and toss. I really have a hard time tossing out anything but now have a stack of interleaving paper 5in high. Hopefully I learn something every time I look at the old prints.

I also took digital photos of a bunch of old mounted prints with my SLR. These are nice to have for any juried show entries, contests and online use.

[Corran]

Back in March and April I made a ton of new prints. Got through a lot of my backlog of negatives from 2019. I also bought a slew of mats and standardized all of my print sizes to match, and matted a lot of new prints to replace my stock from selling at festivals in 2018-2019. Finally got a working website portfolio up, with many currently-available prints, and whilst I went through a dry period in the summer, have finally gotten out of my photography rut and made some good images in the last month and a half I think. And now I'm about to develop my first 12x20 images, so that's new and hopefully doesn't need any repair or whatever. Not a bad year really.

[Jim Noel]

I have spent most of my photography time around the house photographing plants and objects I have overlooked for years. Mostly 8x10 utilizing 2 brands of X-Ray film, with a few 5x7 Fuji HRU.
Lenses have been old ones I wanted to experiment with and a few I made up to see it they were worthwhile. I have come up with several which I will continue to use.

[Dugan]

I have spent most of my photography time since March acquiring gear, getting shutters CLA'd, and testing film and equipment...with a few photo-hikes along the way.
I've processed a lot of film, but now have a backlog of contact sheets and printing to do.
Over my holiday break, I plan on printing work from a series I started in the 1990's.

[MartinP]

Work has continued, it has actually even increased due to customers deciding that a shortened supply-chain is good at this time and ordering from a 'local' producer instead of the Far East. Of course we made environmental adjustments throughout the workplace, but that also increased the rate of busy-ness. So far this year, I have taken six days of holiday which might be normal for the USA but in NL it leaves me around eighteen days which I will lose :( Oh well, at least I have a job.

Photographically, darkroom updates haven't happened (no long-weekends using work holiday-days) but I'm now getting short of 50cm paper so I must have been printing something - just not the projects I have been imagining. I haven't yet finished my foamboard, 10x8", baseboard studio camera either, though I improved my lighting-modifiers and lost the potential subjects. Realistically, we can probably write-off (at least) 2021 as not being 'normal' either, so I'll have to adapt more quickly to the new-normal and plan things nearer home.

Wishing everyone a safe and successful festive season, and a very positive 2021.

[Tin Can]

I was taught the reality of Art submission deadlines 21 years ago in MFA program.

They closed all submissions when the synchronized school clocks hit the deadline to the second, even if you were in line.

Missed the first one by 20 seconds and never again.

No excuse accepted, ever.

[John Kasaian]

Me?
Not much.
My bad :(

[Andrew O'Neill]

Well, the continuation of my Japan coal mine project was buggered up due to covid. That's a project I've been working on (on when I'm there!) since mid 90's. Probably can't pick it up again until Spring, 2022. :mad: In the meantime, I'm maybe out with camera once every couple of weeks...more so with medium format... and in the darkroom puttering around almost daily. Will be glad when we've all got our pokes in the arm, and it's all behind us!!

[Kirk Gittings]

Covid didnt slow me down so much as coincidental health problems. I had some weird virus in August that kicked my butt. I was tested twice for Covid and both were negative. But the virus morphed into double ear infections, then triggered daily migraines for 6 weeks, then I had double eye infection and finally a bulging lumbar disk and stenosis resulting in lower body numbness and muscle weakness. All this slowed down a huge HABS commission I was working on and a WPA documentation commission. Print sales of my landscape work have been ok. But overall it hasn't been a very good time for me.

[Tin Can]

Get well Kirk!

I am NOT moving to NM, so you have that

Gave up on that idea

Staying right here in nowhere

[Kirk Gittings]

Get well Kirk!

I am NOT moving to NM, so you have that

Gave up on that idea

Staying right here in nowhere

Thanks. Nowhere USA is probably the safest place to be right now.

[Mark Sampson]

I've been trying to get out into the landscape this year, with limited success. But I haven't even made a contact proof in a year now (although I have processed most of the negatives I've made). But I'm building a darkroom at home, and am painting it now. Given everything else going on, I hope to be fully operational by year's end... after a gap of nearly two years.
Kirk, hope you're feeling better!

[Alan Klein]

Kirk Sorry you've been going through stuff all that. I'm up there in age, at 75, and suffering bad back pains, scoliosis, and stenosis too which isn't helped by MF and LF equipment weight. WHen I was younger, my Dad used to lament, "Getting old isn't fun."

[Nodda Duma]

I successfully completed the ChromaGraphica Kickstarter campaign, getting everybody’s holders out to them and resolving the occasional issue.

Got the rest of the production shipped here and started building holders for retail sale.

Sourced a US supplier of plate drying rack parts, blank glass, and also sourced smooth black glass for wet plate shooters.

Those are the highlights.

[neil poulsen]

Covid didnt slow me down so much as coincidental health problems . . .

Kirk, Sorry to hear about your health problems. Old age has a way of being fickle. Hopefully, you'll emerge from 2020 with all those problems having been temporary inconveniences.

[Tin Can]

Good work and Bless you and yours this year and more


I successfully completed the ChromaGraphica Kickstarter campaign, getting everybody’s holders out to them and resolving the occasional issue.

Got the rest of the production shipped here and started building holders for retail sale.

Sourced a US supplier of plate drying rack parts, blank glass, and also sourced smooth black glass for wet plate shooters.

Those are the highlights.

[Randy]

Haven't done much. Pop died back in June (not from covid) so me and my siblings have been handling his affairs and getting Mom settled. I have shot and processed a few sheets of 4X5, as well as a couple rolls of 35mm in old cameras. Darn back problems has diminished my motivation to shoot large format somewhat. It's a shame - we have had some nice weather the past couple months here in south central Virginia :(

[vnukov_pk]

Covid spring lockdown got me started in cyanotype and van dyke. In autumn I got new to me 13*18 camera and learned how to dev film in trays. Not bad for a year of shorter work hours.

[neil poulsen]

My wife and I are retired. While age makes us vulnerable to COVID, our retirement status and income has enabled us to STAY HOME! As a result, it's been a relatively productive year, both in photography and making progress in our over-sized yard.

I've been working on a rather solitary project photographing local historic architecture in our college town. Now that winter's here, I look forward to printing B&W silver and processing color image files.

[John Layton]

While my slowing down of print sales had earlier made me somewhat depressed, I now find myself caring a bit less about this - which is starting to feel liberating. This, combined with much less photo-related travel, has meant more just poking around my yard and woods with my camera...kind of like how I got started all those years ago - and I've been finding and creating some nice compositions.

[tgtaylor]

So far Covid-19 hasn't inhibited my photography although I haven't been out photograping and printing anywhere near what I was doing prior to it. I was scheduled for cataract surgery on the right eye just as the pandemic broke out and was apprehensive about having it done in Palo Alto which was the epicenter of the covid outbreak in the bay area at the time. But after two weeks of daily monitoring the vitals (which I continue to do ) I began to plan for a one week road trip in Northern California – which subsequently became a two week trip, at least - and had arrived at the crux of the plan: should I take the 2 F6's (one for B&W and the other for color) and the 8x10 for the alternative print OR the 645NII and P67II and the 8x10? That dilemma was rudely interrupted at 6am on a Sunday morning by a big bang that sounded like a nearby explosion. It was one bolt in the wave of lightening strikes that started the wildfires that consumed much of the west coast – including the area that was in the trips itinerary. So that put a stop to that idea. But not permanently - the road trip is back on the front burner for either this winter or spring.

[Nigel Smith]

I actually need to go back to work for a holiday! Job/home life get blurred too easily.

Photographically (not that I consider this photography as such) I've scanned 16,375 (give or take a few) negatives and slides. Currently working my way through colour negatives and some prints... probably around 200 films to go! I've found some nuggets, but there's a whole lot of tailings! I constructed a Arduino based Shutter Tester but haven't decided whether it's any good. Played around with paRodinal enough to see that it works.

We've reworked our veggie patch so that it's now raised (600mm) so you don't need to bend over to weed/etc. Growing 3 kinds of onions (red,brown & spring), radishes, tomatoes (3 types I think), carrots (2 types), strawberries, coriander (finished for year), capsicum and basil. I pruned my chili plants in winter and they have bounced back with vigor. Huge crop coming! Lots of lemons on tree (it's only a couple of years old) starting to yellow but my lime tree is disappointing. It's also new and produces lots of flowers/buds but they all drop off. It's still growing so I think that's the issue however I can't bring myself to remove the flowers as they appear just in case one survives. Also cleaned the shed out to get my old car out and move it to my garage (which means my son looses the spot!) with the intention to get it back on the road (technically it is, but you wouldn't want to go to far from home!)

Planning on doing some picture taking and printing over the Christmas break.

[Jim Jones]

Much of my photography in recent years has been pro bono sports for a local school. That produces an occasional photo that makes it well worth while. With sports moving indoors, it could be an opportunity to catch up on organizing, editing, and printing. Otherwise, the virus hasn't made much of a change in my life. Twenty years in the U. S. Navy was good preparation for this.