I will be back with some more, possibly new imagery soon!

The first one is from an area in Winslow Arizona called the Creek. A favorite place to swim and jump off the rocks into the water. It was very quiet when I was there in January. This was shot on the Hasselblad and 80mm Planar on Plus-X. It stinks that this film was discontinued though Fuji Acros 100 is not a bad replacement.

The other is a nighttime view of Viña Del Mar in Chile. This was on a Leica with 50mm Summicron and Tri-X. The camera was resting on the wall of a balcony and the exposure was pretty long. Maybe half a second if I remember right. Check out the moon! I am pretty surprised that registered as well as it did.

Both films processed in HC110 and scanned on the 4490. The Arizona pic was resized down from a 50MB scan, which is about 17×17 @ 300 dpi and 16bit. I think it may make a nice print, will have to see. If I can get away with actually making prints from the medium format scans on this scanner I will be pretty impressed. Remember this thing cost less than 200 bucks. I’m not as optimistic about 35mm prints however.

Stay dry this weekend.

This building was photographed in 1998 or so for an architecture class when I was in Philadelphia. That’s architectural photography I should say, and not the business of designing buildings. One of my instructors wondered out loud where the fins were, as this reminded him of a 50′s American car and I can see that. This was a Stewart’s burger and ice cream joint at some point and it was in the middle of being rebuilt as an Italian restaurant when I got to it. This is a favorite photo of mine.

This is also the first image I have posted made on a view camera, a Sinar F2 with 150mm lens. The film was the truly wonderful and woefully missed Polaroid Type 55. This was instant film that gave a negative as well as a positive. The lure wasn’t only that you did not have to process this film (you just pulled it like a polaroid test image then soaked it in Sodium Thiosulfate for a few minutes to fix and clear all the crap off) it was also a simply beautiful black and white film. Only Agfa Scala sticks out as a competitor for the sheer amount of tones this film could produce, but that was a slide film and I believe also extinct. I wish I shot more of this stuff. I have not cropped out the border that the polaroid frame produced on the neg, I always thought it looked cool, even way back in the 90′s, but then all the students I shot with thought the same so it is hardly my idea.

Enjoy your very last week of summer and some cool pics from Germany coming soon!

I am not sure what the first building was or if it is still there. Looks like a hotel of some kind. The second picture is of huge piles of dirt randomly scattered all over the north end of the boardwalk. I love the light poles in this photo. The way they are arranged over the dirt mounds reminds me of the ships from the 1950′s version of The War of the Worlds, with the light poles standing in for the heat ray. Fits well with the abandoned feeling of Asbury Park in those days.

The third and fourth pictures are another view of the Ambassador Hotel. They are a panoramic of sorts; the light pole on the right of the third picture is the same one on the left of the fourth picture.

The last picture is of the unfinished hotel on Ocean Avenue. It is perhaps the most famous icon of the hardships that Asbury Park has endured throughout the last 4 decades. Construction on this luxury hotel was started but halted halfway through. The reasons I have heard range from corrupt town council members to criminal contractors. It stood for 20 years as a reminder that Asbury Park was done. Never to return to its former glory. As long as it stood, Asbury Park would be seen as a joke. Then in 2006 enough factors all fell into line that the decision was made to blow it up, and start again. So it was demolished and another hotel was begun on the very same spot. Then guess what? The economy went to hell and a new unfinished hotel, named The Esperanza, now stands in its place at the corner of Ocean and 4th Avenue. As an added insult, Esperanza is Spanish for Hope.

All of these were shot on the Hasselblad with Agfa film. In looking at these I am wishing the film was not discontinued, but I have found that another company, Adox, has been making a film very similar to it. Not quite the same formula but close enough. This has been happening with a number of black and white films the past few years, which is a good thing for those of us who like getting our hands wet with chemistry.

Hope you liked this series. I will be putting together a gallery sooner or later with most of the pictures on this blog and Asbury Park will have its own section. I am pretty excited to get back and see how different the place is. Oh… and about those parking meters from the last post. The thing that makes them all so weird, is that there are no cars next to them. When was the last time you saw hundreds of parking meters without a single car using one of them? You can see them unobstructed and sticking out of the ground all in a row with no reason for being there at all. I think they really add a creepiness to the abandoned feeling of the place.

Two graffiti pictures and two crumbling building pictures. I am certain that none of these things continue to exist, with the possible exception of the parking meters in the second picture. While I was photographing these a friend asked me about the meters. He had not seen that picture and may have even asked me before I took the picture. He had heard that the parking meters in Asbury Park were strange, eery even. I did not know about this, nor did I know that they were so strange that people who had not been to Asbury Park had heard about how strange they were. As if they were some kind of legend.

It wasn’t until I saw the contact sheet that I realized what was so weird about the parking meters in Asbury Park. Do you see it? It is one of those things that will make you say “oh yeah” when you realize it. I’ll tell you all what it is in a day or two in the comments section or separate post. Feel free to leave guesses, cause hey there may be several weird things about them, I can only say what I think is weird about them.

First picture is a detail of the dilapidated building from last weeks vacant lot shot. The monstrosity of the famous abandoned and incomplete hotel is included in the second shot. Another view of Palace Amusements and a detail of the Casino make up the last two shots.

The Ambassador Hotel is no longer with us. As for the fate of the little bungalow for sale with Weichert, your guess is as good as mine, however I would think that has gone the way of the dodo as well. As may well have the vacant lot in the third picture along with the dilapidated building in the background. However the Casino has survived, due to its age and cultural significance more so than its then current condition I would think.

In revisiting these images I have been getting more interested in Asbury Park. Did you know that it was ranked the sixth best beach in NJ in 2008? I sure didn’t. Apparently a lot has been going on since I was there last and I noticed that I don’t seem to have a good picture of the carousel. I think a few more trips are in order.

The first two pictures are from April or May of 2002 and the last two are from a little earlier, February or March of the same year. Most likely Agfa APX. All of these scans from Asbury Park were done about nine years ago on an AGFA 400 Duoscan. This as some of you may know was a SCSI device. I am happy not to be using it anymore.

Despite the tricky backlighting, this one was far less time consuming than the other photo of Mount Crested Butte. I have to say I think I got pretty lucky with the light and the amount of clouds in the sky during my week out there. It really is a beautiful place. This was made with Plus X on the Hassy and 80mm Planar in HC110 and scanned on the 4490. This film sat in my fridge for about two years after being exposed and it looks like it suffered no ill effects. My 11 year old unexposed Ilford Delta 3200 on the other hand, well that’s a different story.

Also, this post has caused the creation of an “older entries” button on this blog. I now have so many posts that you cannot see them all on one page. I consider that something of an accomplishment, even though I am well aware of the fact that I can choose how many posts to display on a single page.

Asbury Park needs no introduction from me, everyone is aware of how great it was and how bad it got. There was a big noise a few years ago to Save Tillie, the demonic smiling face on the side of Palace Amusements. They tore that building down along with many others. In fact most of the buildings I photographed are not there anymore. It seems that people are buying condos, and going to the beach there now. Maybe it will again become the jewel of the Jersey Shore.

I have about 30 photographs and 16 or so that are good enough to post. Here are four and I will be adding the other twelve here and there when I have no new work to post (like right now).

Enjoy the rest of your summer and if you are near by, hit the Parkway and go see how much things have changed in Asbury Park.

This is Mount Crested Butte in Colorado. I stayed in a friends pretty awesome condo here for about a week two years ago. Friendly people, nice trails and a ski lift, which is how I climbed (almost) to the top of this mountain. I have more pics from the ski lift and the top of the mountain and they are cool, and also… in color! However they are sitting unprocessed in my fridge. I am sure they look GREAT, having been exposed and unprocessed for two full years now. Luckily I also shot some in B&W, but I am not really sure where they are. You are right to wonder how that is any better than old color film in the fridge.

This photograph is on Kodak Plus-X, a nice fine grain film that Kodak just discontinued. Thanks Kodak. I processed it in HC110, which is just about the only developer I think I need apart from a few times when I use Xtol with Ilford Delta 3200. It was shot on a Hasselblad with an 80mm Planar. A pretty standard lens and camera combo, but with very good reason. This was scanned on the 4490 and it was a little bit of work in photoshop to get it to look like this, but it is pretty faithful to the contact sheet. Total PS time was about 45 minutes but that is MUCH faster than what it would take to do this in a darkroom. I could spend four hours with this neg in an enlarger and still not get it to look this good.

Street photography is hard. Even in a place like New York City. I once naively thought that all I would have to do is just walk around and open the shutter and something great would happen on the film. Oh no. Not at all. After hundreds of rolls of film and about five years between shooting in Philadelphia and then New York, these four images really represent the best of all of those negatives. While I think that these are good pictures, the failure to success rate is staggering. I don’t really drag my camera around every time I leave my apartment anymore. I take it instead to somewhere I know I will be able to study the subject for some time, be it to a portrait session or a story or a landscape. There is too much going on out in the street and its really difficult to be able to focus on something. Everything is just too random, at least for me.

The first and last pictures are in New York, the other two are in Philadelphia.

Be back soon and hope you like the pictures and the new look.