Notes From the Field -- Radical Transition, Part 2

For every prohibition...

Viewed from too close, things seem impassible...

I spent a considerable amount of time this winter reviewing my extensive back catalog of 35mm images. This is the second winter in a row I've committed to archiving film and there'll not be a third. That's part of the reason the header and other aspects of this blog remain so woeful out of date. I very much desire to sell my big Nikon scanner and leave film behind once and for all. I knew that if I didn't first scan select 35mm frames I never would. Then it'd be like they'd never been captured all, which was existentially appalling.

So I've now put fresh eyes on 37 year's worth of film. As dogged an effort as that's required, the retrospective is already serving me well in the transition over to digital imagist.

Pictures I shot with Heather's Topcon camera in autumn of 1978 show that my basic photographic interests were present from the start. Tucked amidst the prosaic vacation pictures (geez we were young), I found images of heritage architecture:

 ...and shots taken in the dark:

You know when to get off Bobcat in the evening by the bats. They work near the surface of the water and flit around the canoe like whirligigs. After you watch the bats for awhile because you must, by that time there's insufficient light to safely unhook a fish and before much longer Heather'd have to fire a torch for to see my way home. I guarantee the bats were out when I spotted this guy.

Anyway, as anyone who's followed along knows, my interest in heritage architecture went on to define my body of work on film. Though I pushed hard at the limits of large format fieldwork in low light with some good success, the night -- so rich and wondrous in the woods -- continued to elude capture. I came to figure it always would.

The most exciting thing for me about transitioning over to digital capture is that's no longer true.

The (too) Luminous Dark

Having gotten the basic methodology of night shooting down during June when I also learned that the Nikon has better vision than I do, I was particularly anxious to try some more.

Near the end of a day in the field that'd begun before dawn, I went to Bobcat. I made myself a steak dinner over fire and prepared for night shooting at the same campsite as when I shot the blue fisherman in '78. Many's the time I've retired after dinner to sit quietly at the edge of this splendid lake amidst the croaking frogs and glow worms like stars in the grass to watch the Milky Way rise as day transitioned over to night...

...except what'd previously always been only a mild and fairly unobtrusive glow cast by tiny Presque Isle WI to the south proved freshly intrusive indeed:

Because I was settled in I tried a few different things, some more successful than others. The hour grew late, the day exceptionally long.

There's a spot in the Ottawa with an overlook from a ridge where otters play.  And one year, as my godson and I traveled cross forest through the dark of night to fish a backwoods lake come first of morning, we paused atop that ridge on our way and wondered silently at mighty Orion, more brilliantly defiant in the sky over the hushed forest than I've seen him before or since. I can make my way to that ridge even stumbling around exhausted in the dark. So I packed up and headed there.

Where I found that vantage faces Presque Isle too, with what might be the Ojibwa Correctional Facility off to the side. What? You think things like the occasional prison aren't stashed in your National Forests? Think again.

Or maybe that big-assed glow is the place where they apparently correct Ojibwa and the little one to the right's Presque Isle WI. I didn't pull out the Gazetteer to figure that out. In either case, the sky above my favorite ridge was ruined.

More or less defeated, I turned the Nikon to the north just for the hell of it. I swear I saw nothing but stars with the naked eye and when the Nikon saw green by that time I'd no earthly clue what it might've been. All I knew for sure was that I couldn't see no stinkin' green in the sky and by that time was pretty well wiped besides, so I called it a day. Night. Whatever.

Except it turned out what the Nikon saw and I didn't was the Northern Lights. Had I not already been poleaxed by a too luminous night over the deep woods I might've recognised that, even in the Nikon's little viewing screen. Indeed, I should have recognised it. In which case I'd have excitedly driven the 30 refreshed miles or so through night shrouded wilderness to the shore of the big lake and happily worked the Aurora right through 'til dawn or when the Lights went out, whichever came first.

The next nights proved fairly cloudy and that was that. Still, a couple of things were made plain about this luminous night business, called Landscape Astrophotography.

First and foremost: Location, location, location. There's only one officially sanctioned Dark Sky Park in Michigan and that's a long ways from Superior. Then even if I find the perfect landscape with a grand sky vista it'd still be a one off and that image would have to compete with the like of these. I'll not be visiting Easter Island or find myself sitting at the exact perfect spot on Big Sur anytime soon. So what's a fellow to do?

I mean, if you can't do a thing most others aren't doing and at a high level, why do it?

Well, I've got some ideas about that. I've spent a lot of time contemplating the night woods and know a thing or two about the luminosity that informs an apparently dark forest at different times and under a wide variety of conditions. I'll be working on some of those ideas, come May.

But that's not all, not hardly.

The facility of digital capture along with the review of my entire body of work on film has led me to consider types of image capture I'd left behind or shunted aside years ago, mostly in order to better concentrate on what the limitations of large format fieldwork with film allowed me to do best.

Should you like to know a little something about that, you'll just have to tune in next month.

But that apparently hard wall? Viewed from a broader perspective, it marks a passageway:

Notes From the Field -- Radical Transition Pt. 1

Wolverine Mohawk, Keweenaw County MI, 2014

You can still find people who argue that the imposition of censorship during the early 1930's made Hollywood filmmakers more creative than they'd otherwise have been simply because they had to devise ways to tell a richly informed story within the narrow confines of prior constraint.

Except all you need do is to stream a choice handful of long suppressed pre-code Hollywood films to recognise that argument for the stuff and nonsense it is. Instead, what's true that those same prior constraints forced what'd become the art form of the 20th Century into decades of self-imposed adolescence, right at the hub of its global influence.

If you're interested, start with the uncensored version of Baby Face, then come back and tell me why six years later it was such a big honkin' deal for Clark Gable to inform Vivian Leigh he didn't give a damn. Or why three years after that even sophisticated adults couldn't be sure that Rick and Ilsa had sex during their penultimate night in steamy Casablanca.

Yeah, on the one hand maybe the work of Busby Berkeley wouldn't have been so gloriously mad if not for those same prior constraints. On the other hand, for decades thereafter American popular culture was force fed straight from the corporate trough of a relentless Fantasy Factory and You are what you eat, as they say.

On the other other hand, those technological constraints inherent to fieldwork with large format transparency film dictated the hard limits of its creative use. I can't tell you how many times I walked out into the light from the baroque interior of some splendid ruin creatively bereft because my choice of medium prevented its capture. Which would be why my architectural portfolio leans so heavily to exteriors and why the most evocative scenic work was invariably captured on overcast days.

Here's a fine example of both, on one sheet of film:

Houghton County MI, 2010

Real life enjoys its share of sunny days too, even around the Superior Basin. And generally, when I was mucking around deep inside the guts of someone's ruined dream I could see things just fine thanks, even when my film couldn't. Thus did the prior constraints inherent in the medium restrain not only the body of my work, but my creative vision for it as well.

Over time, those constraints went on to alter my fundamental approach to my subject matter. The very thing I labored to convey as authentic.

And besides, who thinks perfect light never occurs on days so brilliant it hurts your eyes just to see?

Existing light...

The last of film's halcyon days were spent largely in the technological pursuit of ever finer light. Then film died before it ever quite reached the point when early one morning you could lazily come out of a shaded bay, think "Geez, would you look at that", lift the camera, click the shutter and sit back to let the moment breath, reasonably assured you'd captured the essence of it:

Ottawa National Forest, 2014

In years past, if I hit the Superior Basin for a week's worth of work and that week turned out to be resolutely sunny, I'd have shaken my fist at the too bright light with too deep shadows and cursed the photo gods right to their washed out sky. Mostly, only the Magic Hour at either far end of the day would've been salvaged for serious work, though after a while you realise that having captured more than a few gorgeous sunrises and/or sunsets in your time means you've pretty much got that covered.

Not to mention that the twice daily hour or so of magic light is also magic for big fish. These days, I tend to side with the fish.

Before taking the Nikon out for extended fieldwork this last September, I'd set distinct goals. I'd visit those select places where I was already on intimate terms with the quality of light, sites I'd worked repeatedly through the years. That way I could later compare the digital capture with film of the same image, which would allow me to better understand the differences between the two. By pushing hard at its creative controls, I'd find out what the Nikon was capable of.

And I was determined to once again shoot at night, having had such a good time with that in June.

As it turned out, that fieldwork had to be done during the most unusual of September weeks in the Northwoods, with unrelentingly sunny days and bright bluebird skies and the whole world bathed in contrast sufficient to make a strong shooter weep. Just the same, I stuck with the plan.

Which decision proved liberating.

Union River, Porcupine Mountains Wilderness, 2014

Had I come to the turnoff from the South Boundary Road to the Union River during light like that in years past, I'd not have bothered to go in. That's basically in camera, with only the slightest, most routine Photoshop teaks.

As is this:

Gogebic County MI, 2014

And this...

Gogebic County MI, 2014

For a while I went sun crazy and was nearly blinded, by the light. Then I remembered the dark.

Gogebic County MI, 2014

For all the images of this forlorn old Ford that I've captured on film and in a healthy variety of light, I'd captured nothing the like of that.

All of which made me very excited to go traipsing off into the God's honest dark, which we'll revisit together long about this time next month...

A Christmas Wish

At the beginning of our 2nd consecutive century of near perpetual war, it seems to me the only Christmas wish worth the name is Peace on Earth, goodwill to all.

So please to remember -- if you want peace, you must first work for justice.

My very best wishes to you all.

Captured on Film, Part 4 -- In Thanksgiving

It's been suggested that the images in my portfolio with the greatest intrinsic value are those of things that no longer exist. Abandoned remnants of Northwoods culture that without perpetual maintenance somehow managed to stand for decades in a wild place until one day they're gone, like they never were. Simply disappeared, except from the memories of people who worked there or lived there or maybe once upon a time found a special place while wandering in the woods then always remembered the day.

And of course, those remnants survive in images people like me capture before it's too late. On balance that work is also the most valuable to me, personally.

Years pile up and people forget. Stumble across as much stuff back in the woods as I have and in time you forget a lot. There're places I've been that I couldn't find again to save my soul, even if they are still there. Like the time before I was a proper photographer when Heather and I came across an entire -- if exceptionally small -- hilltop town for sale. Complete with a view of big water too, probably Superior. But after this many years of not remembering exactly where we were that day and being unable to find it again, who the hell can say?

My discovery that Whitecap Mnts Manor got bulldozed brought these things to mind. My work there wasn't done. Then it suddenly was. Today all that's left of the thing are memories of the place and images of it. So here're some more images of things that no longer exist...

The vintage barn below represents some of the first work I ever did with the Linhof:

Johnny, Heather and I'd come across this abandoned homestead at the far eastern reaches of the Gogebic Range during the early 80's while wandering around the woods. We had a strange adventure in the old house that stood near the barn, which is a story I'll save for some other time.

Later, Heather and I returned to the site so I could work it. That was the first time I'd ever been inside a vintage pole barn. The first two images were captured in 1997 on a fine afternoon that I remember quite well primarily because of how positively radiant Heather was beneath a warming sun as she roamed the grassy fields behind the place while waves of grasshoppers led the way.

By 2010, this was all that remained. You can still see the pile of hay that no livestock ever ate...

This next barn (?) stood for years by the side of U.S. 2, in Iron County WI. I'm told that There's Nothing Like It In New York was painted large across its face. I never saw that. I passed the thing for years, going to or from one place or the other. Finally, I stopped. Glad I did, because sometime after 2009, this too was bulldozed.

It's intriguing to me, how all manner of things in the Northwoods eventually manage to get themselves pockmarked by bullet holes. Is that particularly American or what?

In  Ashland WI, there once was a massive ore dock that stood as a reminder of the robust and storied heritage of the place. Today, it too is gone. The good people of Ashland hope to someday build a public pier on the crumbling base that remains. There's something perversely encouraging in the fact that there're still somedays afloat in the region.

Mostly, that's what everything there's been built on all along...

As you approach the Keweenaw, the Painsdale Mine once required a proper Administration Building. Then, people worked there and streams of miners passed through it on a daily basis. I captured this image in 2005. I'm told the bulldozers have since eaten this too.

Farther east out on the Keweenaw and along U.S. 41, there stood what was undoubtedly a classic American roadside motel that for who knows how many years served weary travelers and happy vacationers as they made their way around what today might still be the most isolated county in the Midwest. This last September, I watched a couple of men on the job walk over the now cleared lot.

They sure seemed to be assessing the place for some sort of future development. A new motel, maybe?

Back on the Gogebic, this splendid wreck stood at the Puritan Location, so called for the iron mine that long ago was carved into that particular hill. It's likely that this structure was originally a company house for miners and after the mine failed, home to whomever followed the miners for whatever reason up that hill.

Then during one brutal winter, the house simply couldn't take it anymore. We happened across it in May of that year, before any bulldozer could render the place once again safe for civilization. The set of images I captured that day remain among my favorites because in this one wreck is found just about everything I ever shot that sort of thing for:

Lastly, there's this.

In 1984 my family returned to Bessemer to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of our hometown. That was the only time I ever went there with my late Uncle Ray, who a few years after our visit turned out to be the last surviving member of my immediate family that was born and raised on the Range. Uncle Ray was the man who taught me to fish and because I fished, in '78 I chose to take my first adult vacation in the Porcupine Mountains and the Ottawa National Forest. Much of who I went on to be is owed to my Uncle Ray.

While there for the big party in '84, Uncle Ray introduced us to a raft of extended family members -- third & fourth cousins and the like -- not a single one of whom I remember today.

On that trip Uncle Ray also took us along an obscure dead end road up a hill that rises above the northeastern reaches of Bessemer to look out across an ancient range of mountains that once scraped the sky but are today merely rolling hills, past glories having been rounded off by time until now only the shadow of it remains.

That afternoon Uncle Ray showed us the house Uncle John built, when once upon a time on that hillside was our family farm.

In 2010 I returned to Uncle John's house, to capture the memory of it before it was gone:

I'm thankful for a lot of things. For Heather especially. And of course for all those I've loved through the years and who've loved me in return. I'm well blessed in that regard and make no mistake.

But I hold a special place of thanks in my heart for the lifetime of work I've been privileged to do on and around the Superior Basin. That work would never have happened had not my great, great grandfather for reasons no one remembers chosen to make his way to the Gogebic Range before it ever was that, sometime prior to 1884.

I'm thankful every day that his grandson, my dear Uncle Ray, some 80 odd years later and in the place of my birth that's about as different from the Northwoods as a place can get, saw fit to teach a city kid how to fish.

Because as it happened, my maternal family of immigrants put down roots in their new country on what later became the fabled Gogebic Range, still one of the most challenging and rewarding landscapes in America.

And today, those obscure roots in a hard place I've never lived still manage somehow to sustain me.

Captured on Film, Part 3 -- Stark's Cabins

Some of you may have noticed last month was the first month since September 2011 that this blog lay fallow. At the last, I was out and about around Superior wrestling with the Nikon through a brief window of autumn weather so splendid that if we'd ever seen the like back in the day when each autumn Johnny, Heather & I bustered around the place trying not to get in too much trouble but only just enough, it'd now be revered as the halcyon days of our youth.

As it is, we never enjoyed an autumn so gentle.

Standing together in contemplation of all that late season Northwoods splendor, a dear friend helpfully suggested You've still got a few days... But I wanted no part of that. Starting work in September then finally playing hooky in September three years later had suitable symmetry and I very much needed to be full in the moment without needing to think about translating that down for you on deadline.

I pushed both myself and the Nikon hard. It purred. Next time out I'll have to push it harder. After the first of the year, we'll examine what I did.

In the meantime we'll just stick with an established theme. Film is dead. Long live film and the ghosts captured with it...

All images scanned from 4x5 transparency film

I call these Stark's Cabins because on U.S. 2 near Watersmeet 40 miles or so to the east, Stark's Cabins Restaurant and Trout Pond was run by James Stark and his wife Molly from 1946 to their retirement in 1984.  Maybe this strikingly similar set of roadside tourist cabins near Wakefield was never owned by James and Molly Stark. Maybe there came a time when most cabins in the region were built this way and at that time there was for some reason a lot of red paint to be had cheap. There're a couple more like these, now outbuildings on a spread between Wakefield and Marenisco and also hard to the road.

Anyway, Stark's Cabins these'll always be to me. One thing's pretty certain -- the cabins near Wakefield closed before my time on the Range, which began in earnest circa 1978. In my time, I believe these were always derelict.

1946 was the first year without a World War in quite the while. America was flush and stood astride the known Universe. Our love for the automobile and the open road blossomed, as new and luxurious touring cars were introduced at prices we could afford, when paid for on time. Kinda like this beauty, though I can't vouch for the model year:

Throughout the great northern wilderness, roads had been cut and facilities built back during that brief time between World Wars when Depression struck and government put citizens to work making improvements to government land in order to help save the country from wrack and ruin. Many of the facilities constructed by the C.C.C. still stand as gorgeous examples of American craftsmanship, but those aren't why we're here today.

By 1946 we'd hit the road in earnest and have yet to stop.

Born 1896 in Vienna Austria, James Stark had in the meantime made his way to the northern wilderness by way of Wisconsin, where he'd married the young Molly Harper. They owned a potato farm for a while but eventually turned to logging then apparently followed the fallen forest north to Watersmeet. Near some of the last remaining old growth forest in the region, they staked a permanent claim.

In 1946 the Mighty Mac was still just a dream and the U.P. remained the edge of the stinkin' world, cut off on two sides by two Great Lakes and the formidable channel between them.

It was a long drive to there from anywhere. But when you finally arrived at what's today the surviving remnant of that aforementioned old growth forest (the famous Sylvania Wilderness), James and Holly Stark were there to greet you with the latest in Northwoods style, one-stop shopping roadside convenience. Even a trout pond, in case you really didn't care to venture beyond sight of the road for to catch some of those.

I worked this set of cabins near Wakefield on and off through the years. James and Holly's verifiable cabins out near Watersmeet got torn down before I got serious.

The thing that tickles me most about these is that in their heyday, they came festooned with neon. Neon! Just imagine evenings spent with the bzztt bzzzt bzzzt of glowing tubes drawing cumulus clouds of an all but unimaginable variety of insects while secure in rough but modern creature comfort, fly strips swinging gently in the summer breeze, you lifting bourbon in a metal cup in honor of Northwoods glories past, present and yet to come.

I'd have given a lot, to have seen these cabins properly lit up just once. Look closely, that light fixture is about half-filled with dead flies and so much for yellow bug lights, eh?

These cabins near Wakefield proved deceptively difficult to shoot. Bad light, lousy timing, mostly. Then in 2005 I was determined. It was a Red Flag Day when the light felt right, the kind of day that 130 or so some odd years before Chicago had burnt right to the ground.

And for the first time ever my old Bogen tripod betrayed me as the 40+ mph breeze that shook the woods shook the Linhof too and most of the images from that set into terminal softness, two of which I've included here just the same. Armed with a great new tripod, a couple years later I returned to finally seal the deal with Stark's Cabins. Except in the interim, this set of vintage roadside tourist cabins had been bulldozed then got burnt to the ground.

James Stark died on June 16th, 1984 in Watersmeet. Holly Stark followed her husband on March 4th, 1988. From their union came three daughters, 28 grandchildren, 28 great-grandchildren and Stark's Cabins, Restaurant and Trout Pond. Having put themselves in the right place at the right time and willing to meet opportunity with industry, together they served adventurous Northwoods travelers for nearly 40 years.

*

Though I never stayed in the cabins, ate at the restaurant or fished the trout pond, I nevertheless have a related story...

Johnny, Heather and I annually rented our big-assed Grumman aluminum canoe from Sylvania Outfitters in Watersmeet. Heather and I rode one of those into the Bear Story. I've long since owned my own canoe but Bob Zelinski has run his place now for more than 40 years and I recommend him to you. It may even be that Stark's old trout pond is hard by Bob's parking lot, I don't rightly recall.

One year back in the day I'd traveled from Bobcat over to Watersmeet to rent our canoe and found the shop closed. I wandered over to a sizeable building nearby, hoping to inquire. I recall the inside as something of a rectangular shed full of miscellaneous stuff and noticeably dim, with shafts of light from the bright day outside intruding to catch dust dancing in the air.

At the far end of the building two bent old ladies dressed in dark clothes sat together at a table, listening intently to a radio. I excused myself. They didn't look up. Uncertain but about half desperate, I stepped forward and excused myself again, thinking perhaps they'd not heard me over the din of the radio.

They replied in unison, with sharp glance and even sharper SSHHHH!!!

I'd not realized they were playing radio Bingo. Hell, until that moment I'd not realized there was radio Bingo. In time I was allowed to make my apologies, received the information I needed and ended up back at Bobcat with that season's canoe. For years I thought the story was about radio Bingo.

Today I'm pretty sure that building was what remained of John and Holly Stark's restaurant.

And though I can't say for certain, I prefer to believe that one of the old ladies who so admonished me that day was the estimable Holly Stark, widow of James Stark, who with her husband once upon a time made a fine life together in the woods.

Captured on Film, Part 2 -- Whitecap Mnts Manor

Perhaps a friend first pointed me in this direction, I don't rightly recall. Or maybe I got lucky, which can happen on rain days salvaged by wandering previously unexplored back roads just to see what's there.

At any rate I didn't used to wander Wisconsin much, yet in 2001 I came across this:

From 4x5 Transparency, circa 2001

It was a gloomy day. I've never been able to coax a great scan from my first image of this grand old Wisconsin dairy barn abandoned to Iron County wilderness, but by my next visit the inscription had faded. The above is the only capture I have of it, misspelling of any generally accepted abbreviation for mountains still largely intact.

Periodically, I returned to the site. In time, Whitecap Mountain Manor became one of my favorite places to shoot and I've a raft of images from it. This barn was built by hand to last, with materials mostly gathered from the magnificent landscape around it.

By any measure, a vintage American barn of authentic merit.

From 4x5 transparency, 2009

Off to the left of the barn stood an outbuilding that turned out to be nearly as enticing as the barn itself, what I came to call the Whitecap Mountain Manor Annex:

From 4x5 transparency, 2009

That's a potted marijuana plant basking in the sun at the upper window. I got close enough to know it, then discretely went about my business. That's the thing about working abandoned places -- you never can tell who or what you'll find. Prudence is frequently essential to the skillset.

At WCMM the next year, I captured one of my favorite images in my architectural portfolio on film. Sometimes, you can find stars out even during the day:

From 4x5 transparency, 2010

Then in 2011 at the beginning of this Odyssey I took the Linhof and new Mamiya to crawl around the place but good. By that time the barn was in some serious disrepair. I invited a friend to come along in both mutual interest and for safety's sake, since I intended to finally work where prudence suggested I oughtn't...

From 120mm transparency, 2011

...including somehow getting myself and the Linhof up to the 2nd story of the main structure:

From 4x5 transparency, 2011

What's a little tilted floor among friends, right?

Once up there it was plain to see where floorboards were cracked and even given full away beneath the weight of other wanderers before me. I stuck to the hand hewn support beams cut big around as my thigh in support of the outside edge, while my friend stood by below to catch the Linhof if I tumbled.

Again on safe ground, I figured that for the prize of the day. I was mistaken. From the upper window of the Annex, I later captured this with the Mamiya:

From 120mm transparency

In my portfolio there're many images of things that no longer exist. 

Somewhere along the way I figured out that those represent the most valuable aspect of the fieldwork. Even though each time I revisit a site only to find what I'm looking for is vanished, a little part of me vanishes too.

So it was last week with Heather on vacation, when with my spiffy new Nikon in tow we took a run down to Whitecap Mountain Manor for to see what the most brutal winter in years had done to the place and to continue my documentation of its long, slow slouch into terminal wreckage. This time I came armed with digital wizardry that had me very much looking forward to the interior shots a bit of HDR capture might earn me.

Except we found my favorite incredibly sturdy if well worn example of rustic Wisconsin dairy barns that'd long since become like an old, reliable friend was just gone:

Nikon 800e digital capture, August 2014

A Realtor owns the place. Fresh signage is up. You could buy it, if you chose. No doubt crumbling Whitecap Mountain Manor finally proved too much a burden to the land, at least for purposes of selling it.

Now all that remains to tell anyone that something proud ever stood there is a surprisingly small patch of brown dirt, laid flat by virtue of bulldozer.

And of course, there's my film of what was. Which is a big part of the reason I decided to continue the gig, even without there being any more film.

*

I've been unable to uncover the narrative of Whitecap Mountain Manor.  Being just another wreck in the woods, it never shared the architectural distinction of the Annala round barn and no one saved it.

But should anyone reading this know any part of the story of this farm, I invite you to please drop by and share it.

I'm gonna miss the place...

Captured on Film, Part 1 -- Four-wheeled Ghosts

I spent the better part of this last winter creating high res scans of every image I'd ever committed to pro film that I thought might someday prove useful. That was quite the task.

I did that to better clear the path for my transition to digital capture and because given the pace of technological change in revolutionary times, there's no guarantee I'll be readily able to do that later and I needed to part with my commercial flatbed scanner for to get a new whiz-bang Mac and move forward.

Now my nearly twenty years in the making portfolio of 4x5 and 120mm chrome is finished: cataloged, duplicated and secure both on disc for the files and in library binders for the original images. If I've ever the time, I'll pull a couple hundred selects from my collection of vintage 35mm chromes  and digitize those too. I held on to the Nikon scanner for that, as it had no resale value.

Film is dead, long live film.

You might think that hundreds of hours spent scanning was drudgery and you'd be right, it was all of that. It was also a process of discovery because there were things I didn't remember and my understanding of image assessment has evolved. Then when we were together on the Odyssey, all I ever did was pick out a handful of hopefully useful selects and move rapidly on to shoot more, never looking back. Now for the first time I can view my entire body of work on film as an unchanging and completed whole, a useful perspective that not long ago would've been impossible were I not retired or dead.

I got a fair price for the flatbed scanner, though not enough for the Mac. That means I can't yet fully capitalize on the work I'm doing with the new Nikon, or even fully understand it. Which means I don't have much to show you.

So rather than try and fake it, I've decided to honor my creative legacy on film by delivering up chunks of it here, while I continue to swim the fast currents of technological change as best I'm able, behind the scenes. Please excuse the intrusive (and as it turns out rather indifferently sized) watermark on the images. Since I'll be putting these up in bunches, it seemed only prudent.

Anyway, nothing like a good 'ol American car show over the 4th of July, sez I...

Called F.O.R.D. (fix or repair daily), this old truck belonged to a friend and was captured on 4x5 transparency, while grinning at me in perfect light:

That same friend later acted as guide for a visit to an obscure wreck of a stamp mill in Ontonagon County, as there was something there he said I should see. The site itself was no great shakes as ruined stamp mills go and we'd have to climb down the attendant ravine to reach our goal. About halfway down, slipping and sliding with my 50# of gear, I was thinking This better be stinkin' good...

At the bottom was a classic Ford, from back in the day. As the ravine was immediately below the stamp mill, the trees that eventually crushed it weren't even seedlings when first someone'd managed to leave that car all the way down there. My friend was disappointed that the thing'd been crushed since last he'd seen it, but I damned near came right out of my shoes at the sight.

That afternoon I captured my favorite all time image of an abandoned vehicle, called Fit to a T or A Creek Runs Through It, which image I believe is likely already floating around on this blog somewhere, though I can't quite locate it to link to, imagine that.

But a rich trove of alternate images is part of what all that scanning bought me:

A bit up that same creek and mostly out of the ravine, we found this. Then instead of climbing back up the way we'd come in, we took the newly discovered easy way out and it turned out to be a really good day indeed.

I found this old Plymouth in Gogebic County and revisited it through the years, waiting for everything to be perfect. Finally it was and I captured a full set on 4x5 chrome that includes the image below. It turned out to be providential that I did that then, as not long after this Black Beauty was gone:

This next was a roadside curiosity also in Gogebic County and while it's situation didn't allow for satisfactory capture, there're so many bullet holes in this hulk that I simply had to throw a roll of 120mm chrome at it:

I'd travelled along the road between Ontonagon and the Porkies repeatedly over the years. But it wasn't until November of 2011 that I was there when the forest that hid it had dropped all pretense sufficiently for me to see this next. I recall driving right by, with my peripheral vision wide to each side of the road as always, then thinking Say what?!? before making a quick u-turn.

Captured on 120mm chrome with the Mamiya, because by then I was already using the last of the 4x5 and was jealous of it, a no longer winged messenger Mercury:

These last three have appeared on these pages before. They're selected from among the many 120mm images I took at the site during the last couple of years I shot on film. I've plenty on 4x5 too.

I'm not telling specifically where I found this pair, but offer the set as proof that if you wander along the back roads of U.P. and look around closely enough while you do, there's just no telling what sort of treasures you might find...