The Chalk Mountain Country

Spent the day driving around the farm roads and old churches southwest of Cowtown.

Down beyond Glen Rose is the Chalk Mountain country where the rugged limestone hills give the area some nice up and down.

As a photographer I frequent the area and I follow the winding roads through the farms and ranches, past small streams and rivers. A place that I often see road bikers pedaling, bikers, on their hogs, and even saw a Ferrari club out here once.

A great place to drive.

And to chase images.

Here is one. Probably nothing more than a rather typical field but the solitary distant tree and the light begged to be photographed. So I did. Here is the set up. Along the fence. Long lens. B+W.

Still waiting on processing on the negatives as I still aint ready to make that jump yet.

A New Beginning

I did something this month I thought was almost unthinkable a few months back......I learned to load a traditional film holder.

I have used nothing but Fuji Quickloads since I started in large format photography. A Quickload holder and a couple boxes of Velvia Quickloads were all I needed or ever wanted. When I heard earlier this year of the demise of Quickloads, I was numb from loss. After going through sadness and anger I gave fate a chance. A friend loaned me a conventional holder and I got a 10 sheet box of Acros to practice with. I loaded up two sheets and went out and shot them. Then two more. Then two more. Until finally the box was gone. It takes a while to even use a box of 10 sheets when you only have one holder. After using them all, I had thee sheets processed. I was not sure what to expect and was quite pleased when they were all decent. Hey- I did it and did not ruin the film!

It was not so bad after all.

So I went and bought a few holders of my own. On top of that I decided to try something else new too. I have enough Velvia Quickloads in the fridge to last me many months so I decided to use B+W film in the conventional holders. Why not start something new with this new skill?

I ordered 100 sheets of Efke 25 and am ready to start down a new path in large format. It is exciting and very much a new beginning to be out chasing the B+W landscape (on top of still chasing the grand landscape in color).

The image here is from one of those days with just one holder. I was out at the Great Falls of the Clear Fork of the Trinity and made a total of two images (with one holder, thats all you get!). This is the set up for one of them.

Snow at Grand Canyon

Snowfall as seen from Hopi Point at the south rim of the Grand Canyon.

This was a fantastic sunset from what I think is the best sunset viewpoint in the park. Hopi offers up views both east and west. I went here for hopes of seeing the full moon rise over the length of the canyon. The weather you see here blocked that moonrise, but I think seeing it snowing on the north rim while I was in the sunshine was a good trade!

Mittens View

The Mittens and the famous "Ansel rocks" in Monument Valley.

The snow in the valley was a treat and made the photography even nicer than the normal amazing views.

BTW- the famous rocks are right next to the parking lot. I was standing in it to take this image. So if you go-you will not miss them!

Red Rocks in Monument Valley

Another view of the area around Artist Point in Monument Valley.

The big view is what the camera is looking at, but the rocks right there are neat and worthy of an image.

Ok, I did not actually use the 4x5 for them but I did burn a few pixels.