How Big Is Your Camera?

- Oh, I use a full sensor camera, it’s big, is it not?
- No, I mean larger.
- Like an 8″ x 10″ view camera?
- No, no, larger, much larger…

Vera Lutter, Cargo Field, Frankfurt AirportSo could go a conversation but never reach the epic proportions that Vera Lutter uses for a camera. In fact, calling the device that she uses a camera will probably be a stretch for many since she uses containers as her imaging device. I mean containers that are hauled on the back of tractor trailers or rail cars, that are loaded to cargo ships, those large boxes that can swallow an entire household furniture and have room for the family sedan inside. She uses the original concept of image making, a Camera Obscura.

Her photographs are unique as each is captured on photographic paper secured to one wall of the container. On the other side, she uses a pinhole as the image forming device instead of a glass lens. She varies the “focal length” by bringing the paper closer to the pinhole. As you can imagine, the “focal length” is probably expressed in “feet” like “I photographed this with a 22-feet lens!” Say what?! [Read more...]

Great Salt Lake – Folio 3

Looking GSL Folio 3 - Cover down to the Great Salt Lake is a surreal experience, not only do the colors change unexpectedly but also the surface-depth-bottom relations present visual riddles. There I was in the helicopter, looking down at a reddish-orange, or orangeish-red water not being able to figure out what lied on the surface and where the bottom was. An unexpected glow seemed to come from beneath the surface delineating shapes, lines; of what I could not tell.

A new addition to the Great Salt Lake collection is the Folio 3 | The Glow Collection which includes 5 photographs. The folio is available in the store for purchase.

Great Salt Lake โ€“ Folio 3 | The Glow Collection

Great Salt Lake โ€“ Folio 6

A GSL Folio 6 - Cover new addition to the Great Salt Lake folio series is the Folio 6 | The Spiral Jetty Collection. The Spiral Jetty is one of the best known earth work or land art by Robert Smithson. He conceived the idea and constructed the land art using basalt rocks available on site. Robert Smithson finished the jetty a few years before a fatal plane accident while scouting another site for one of his projects. He was 35 years old. From the air, the jetty looks like a strand of the shore line wound up tight into a spring. The folio is available in the store for purchase.

Great Salt Lake โ€“ Folio 6 | The Spiral Jetty Collection


Great Salt Lake – Folio 4

In GSL Folio 4 - Cover the continuing series of Great Salt Lake folios, I now jump to somewhere in the middle, Folio 4 | The Fields of Color Collection. Minerals and evaporation in the Great Salt Lake work like the palette and the brush of an artist to create an amazing range of colors and abstract “art”, nature’s painting if you will. When this is combined with human efforts to extract different minerals, the result is divided parcels of colors, sometimes in stark contrast to each other. It is available in the store for purchase.

This collection is dedicated to my wife Jan. She likes them very much and calls them “jewels”.

Great Salt Lake – Folio 4 | The Fields of Color Collection

Great Salt Lake – Folio 8

Aย Great Salt Lake - Folio 8 few posts ago I wrote about a wonderful experience I had had flying over the Great Salt Lake and presented the contents of Folio 1. Instead of going in a sequential order, I have decided to present the last folio in this collection, Folio 8 | The Human Touch Collection. As you will read in the introduction, compared to nature’s orderly creations from apparently chaotic processes give way to the chaotic visuals that human hand seems to create with orderly processes. The roads, structures, curves, shapes, all in the human touch collection show rigidity in place of fluidity, efficiency in place of grace of forms. Don’t get me wrong, I like these photographs as much as the first set and others that will come. However, the differences are certainly noteworthy for me. The folio is available for purchase in the store and is priced at $75 for a limited time.

Great Salt Lake – Folio 8 | The Human Touch Collection