Blogodocious ramblings of a landscape photographer living in Maine.
Ice Shack T.v. and the Legend of Carleton Watkins
Ice Shack T.v. -Of course it's got a flatscreen.
Check this one out: here's a photographer that's new to me: Carleton Watkins (1829-1916), a landscaper from the late 19th century who made lots of work in California and the Yosemite area on wet plates on his "mammoth camera". 
A buddy of mine who went to school for this stuff was telling me about him yesterday so I looked him up and can't stop thinking on him, here's why: according to the legend and backed up by the Wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carleton_Watkins he was a successful and influential photographer who had a hand in having Yosemite established as a national park and had a successful studio in San Francisco but then suffered financially due to poor decisions and lavish sensibilities, but the kicker is: when San francisco suffered the massive earthquake of 1906, and subsequently the city burned, he lost everything and every last negative or plate he had left- and he went mad!- and was committed to the Napa state hospital for the insane where he died a decade later. A morbid and visceral reminder to back up your files reduntantly and keep one off site copy! Good lord man, what a horrible story! So there you go, with that little gem in mind: have a nice day! -Nate.
Carleton Watkins (title unknown)
Yosemite Falls ca. 1878-1881
View from Sentinel Dome, Yosemite 1865-1866
title unknown
title unknown
"Coast View #1, 1863"
Multnoma Falls Cascade, Columbia River, 1867 Carleton Watkins. (from the Metropolitan Museum of Art NY website): In 1867, Watkins made a four-month trip to Oregon and the Columbia River. Josiah Whitney accompanied him for the first month and helped finance the excursion. Watkins had photographed the Nevada, Vernal, and Yosemite Falls before he went to Oregon; on those occasions, he either described the waterfalls as elements within broader landscapes (on the mammoth plates) or made close-up shots of the water roaring over the rocks (for stereo viewing). In this marvelously minimal photograph, he seems to have applied the simplicity of effect he usually reserved for stereographs to the monumental mammoth plate; boldly reducing the cascade to its essentials, white water cleaves dark rock in a single stroke, like liquid lightning.
stereoscope
Half Dome Yosemite Valley California, ca. 1867
title unknown
Yosemite Falls ca. 1865
Carleton Watkins with some of his kit
Watkins, 78 years old, and assistants fleeing the oncoming fire that accompanied the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Most of his fragile glass plates and his studio were destroyed in the calamity and he died penniless in an insane asylum a few years later.
Eagle!
Eagle!
I don't usually photograph birds and or wildlife, but when I do- I pine for a 300 2.8, or even better a 500 4.0. That's typically why I don't usually try to get these kinds of photos, I just don't have that reach out and touch someone ability of the long lens. This is a 100 percent crop of a 100mm 2.8 and I was standing about 40 feet back from the tree that this guy was sitting in, he was up probably 30 feet off the ground and hung out there for a good five minutes or so to give me time to change lenses out from my wide that I was just using that also had a ten stop ND on it (wouldn't have worked at all!) and time to get my exposures right (he was crazily back light by the sun which was directly behind him but there were breaking storm clouds that would go from completely blocking the sun to screaming brightness a second later- started shooting in Manual mode but quickly switched to Aperture priority). I had just come around the corner driving back from making some more ice shacks photos and what I saw up in this tree from half a mile out or so was either a fire hydrant, a giant cat stuck up in the branches, or a bald eagle. And there are a bunch of BE's that hang out around this spot because they fish out of the open water that flows out from Seal Cove Pond here, you can often see pairs of them sitting on the edge of the ice doing there thing. So if I ever wanted to make BE pictures I would loiter there. Maybe someday. They (the bald eagles) are completely magnificent birds that I try not to take for granted, sometimes it seems that I'll see one everyday- but having lived in the Boston area for most of my life before moving to Maine in the 1990's I never used to see them ever. I still remember the first time I looked up into a tree after just arriving in Maine, hiking along the ocean in Acadia, and here was a giant and incredible bald eagle that had me floored in amazement. Now I think of them as good luck omens. And there you have it. This will probably look good enough compressed to the web, but I wouldn't want to try and print it large- that's reserved for the land of those big long white-barrelled L lenses. That's it for now- have a good one peoples. -Nate!
Eagle Eagle!
Spruce Reflections in Maine Ice
Spruce Reflections in Maine Ice. Typical of the between winter and spring time that is now here.
At least I'm not showing you all the mud. There is so much mud here now that when I was backing out of the driveway yesterday to run to the store my little "grocery getter" car sunk down into the muck and before I knew it the bumper cover was almost totally ripped off- I found that out upon getting home from the store so the more ridiculous part is that we drove around like that for the 20 minutes it took to make the trip. So embarrassing! Do not park there. At least it's not a sinkhole. Be safe out there fellas! and have a good week- Nate from Maine, USA.
The Deep End
The Deep End. 300 seconds at dawn at Seawall in Acadia. ND 110 iso 100. 24mm T-se.
Too tired for words. Be back next week- save a place for me, and have a good one, -Nate!
Shelf Life
Shelf Life. 190 seconds from Seawall in Acadia, super low tide at f/8.0 iso 100, 10 stop ND, 2 stop GND.
Right then, so every year about this time I get tired of the beard and in celebration of the feeling of spring I shave it off in various stages eventually getting back to being regular faced. So in conjunction with finding a new wicked cool tin-type film pack on the Hipstamatic I hereby present you with my three versions of face fuzz for this year: 
version 1.1 big-beard.
version 1.2 inverted goatee.
version 1.3 'stache!
Which one do you think I should go with eh?