Dalton Rooney

I happened across an old episode of Art:21 on PBS this morning, and enjoyed a short feature on Robert Adams. The website has quite a few video clips, slideshows, and an interview with Adams.

If you are unfamiliar with the work Robert Adams, I can’t recommend his book of photographs The New West highly enough, it is one of my all-time favorite books of photography. His book of essays Beauty in Photography is a must read, too.

Bonus: Sally Mann and Hiroshi Sugimoto on Art:21. Seeing Sally Mann with her collodion plates and Sugimoto in his studio making pictures of fossils just made my day.

Photograph by Dalton Rooney

The photos from Sicily are coming along nicely. I have finished developing film and I am now scanning, processing, and beginning to think about editing. Editing is definitely going to be a big challenge for me… when I left for Sicily, I had no idea where the project was headed and my focus was a bit scattered. Now I have at least 30-40 photographs that I like, but I know that a lot of them will not make the final cut as I try to put together the story. At least when I am able to continue the project (hopefully next spring, although not in Sicily), I will have a better idea of what to look for.

I need to get a first cut ready soon, because Platinum/Palladium printing begins next week. I’ve ordered all of the necessary chemicals and equipment and am doing a run-through with my professor on Tuesday. I’m sure my first few attempts will be pretty miserable, but I’ll be posting them anyway!

Photograph by Dalton Rooney

One of my favorite side trips while in Sicily was to the necropolis of Pantalica. Sometime around 1000 BCE, thousands of tombs were carved into the walls of a deep gorge running through the hills of eastern Sicily. It is now a protected national park.

The guidebook was unclear on specifics, but it seemed like it would be about an hour on the bus to Sortino, plus another hour to walk to the park. I packed food and water accordingly, knowing that it would be a hot day.

Three hours after leaving Sortino on foot, I finally arrived at Pantalica. It had been a difficult hike, with lots of hills and valleys along the way. There had been nowhere to get water once I left town, so I was already running low. I stopped for a quick lunch when I got to the entrance of the park and then descended into the gorge. Steps had been carved directly into the rock, worn away from thousands of years of use. Thousands of tombs and larger caves dotted the sides of the cliffs. It was a truly awe-inspiring and humbling moment.

I didn’t get to explore as much as I wanted because of the water situation; I had to turn back and head into town after only about ninety minutes in the gorge. I ran out of water about half-way back to town and dragged myself the rest of the way. I arrived in Sortino exhausted, dehydrated, and covered in dust from head to toe, but extremely satisfied with the day’s adventure.

This trip reinforced two things I think I have always known, but never really solidified in my mind. The first is that I am a desert person. I love the climate of the desert, I love the landscape, I love the vast amount of space between one place and the next. I attribute this at least partially to the time I spent growing up in Joshua Tree, and I am going to continue this series of photographs in southern California and Baja Mexico next year.

The second thing that was reinforced for me on this trip is the fact that I am a wanderer, to an extreme degree. I was happiest when I was out climbing mountains, hiking long distances, getting out and away from the city. This, too, I attribute to growing up in Joshua Tree. I had to walk for miles to get to school, to visit friends, or even just to go to the store. My hours of wandering back then gave me the chance to explore the world, and I think that I got a chance to revisit that feeling of discovery in Sicily.

A few hours alone in the desert gave me the chance to concentrate and really engage the visual side of my brain. This is not something that is instantaneous or even easy for me; I am easily distracted and it usually takes me a little while to switch gears. This is especially obvious in my contact sheets from that day; the first roll is so-so, and the fourth is a bit weak again because I was getting tired. But the two contact sheets in the middle are full of visual ideas that feel fresh and new to me. Having that time to really focus and let the landscape sink in had a tremendous impact on the quality of my work that day.

Photograph by Dalton Rooney

My wife’s aunt and uncle live on a farm in a little town about an hour outside of Palermo. This is the view I saw out the window every morning when I woke up.

Just as I am about to begin my own journey into the world of platinum-palladium printing, this gorgeous image arrived in my email inbox courtesy of 20×200.

Clearing, Wakehurst Place, by Beth Dow

I have been a fan of Beth Dow’s work for quite some time now, especially her “In the Garden” series, and always promised myself I would scoop up a medium sized print if one became available on 20×200. (Her originals are a bit out of my price range for now). Well today was the day, and all three editions sold out quite quickly, but I managed to get my order in and will give this print a good home.

Photograph by Dalton Rooney

I’ve finally got enough film from the trip developed and scanned to choose a few photos for the website. I still haven’t gotten to the film from Pantalica, a giant necropolis outside of Siracusa where I think I took my best photos. These are from Monreale and Monte Pellegrino, just outside of Palermo.

I broke down and bought a Nikon Coolscan 9000 today. For two reasons: I found a small crack in the glass of my Epson 4990 yesterday, and also because I am very excited about my photos from Sicily and want to be able to print them larger than 12×12. I’ve never been satisfied with the print quality of medium format scans on the Epson beyond 12×12. I think I may have gotten the only 9000 in New York City, since Calumet is the only shop that had it in stock, and they had exactly one.

I’ve had the scanner just long enough to realize that the software isn’t 100% compatible with OS X 10.5 or Photoshop CS3, that I am going to need to upgrade to the glass negative carrier (or maybe save $300 and do the DIY version like this guy did?) and to realize just how big and loud the thing is. From the one or two scans I’ve managed to make so far I can already tell that I don’t like the software at all, but the final scans seem quite a bit sharper than the Epson at 1800 dpi. More reports as they come in.

UPDATE: Just for comparison’s sake, here’s the same negative scanned with the Nikon Coolscan 9000 and the Epson 4900 at 2400 DPI. (Click the image to see the 100% view) Both were scanned as raw tiff files in VueScan and inverted in Photoshop with ColorNeg. The complete photo can be seen here.

Two years ago, I took a trip that changed my life. My wife and I were traveling together in Italy—being tourists, visiting family, eating great food—and out of nowhere, I realized that I was meant to be a photographer. It was a bolt out of the blue and I had absolutely no idea what it meant. I had a small point and shoot camera with me at the time and knew nothing at all about photography. But I returned from that trip somehow knowing what I was going to do with the rest of my life.

In the two years since, I’ve been continually surprised by how prescient that realization was. I’ve gone deep, deep down the rabbit hole, spending entire days in the art library at Brooklyn College, devouring book after book of photography. I remember the exact moment I discovered the work of Harry Callahan. The same goes for Robert Adams, George Tice, Walker Evans, and Stephen Shore. Oh my god, Stephen Shore. There was an entire world that I had no idea existed, and now I am completely immersed in it.

I’ve looked at thousands of pictures in the last two years and taken thousands of pictures myself. I’ve often been unsteady and unsure of myself, like a newborn deer taking my first steps. I’ve taken some wrong turns along the way, but for the most part I have steadily improved. I know an awful lot about the technical requirements of making a good photo. I know how to put together a composition. I am developing a visual style and learning to work within a theme. But most importantly, I’ve learned a lot about myself. I’ve learned about the great unknowable questions that live inside of me, and I’ve learned that I can get ever closer to answering those questions with a camera in my hand. I don’t think that I’ll ever get all the way to the bottom of all of this, or at least I hope I don’t. What do you do with a Rubik’s Cube that’s already been solved? You put it on the shelf and admire it. But I do know that every big step along the way leads to art-making that satisfies me on the deepest level.

I’ve just returned from another two weeks in Italy. Much like the last trip, it was revelatory. I have spent the last two years preparing the foundation for this moment, and I feel like I have taken that next step. I worked myself to the point of exhaustion. I climbed mountains, crossed rivers, and walked for days on end. At one point, I was fairly certain that I was going to die. (Never leave for a day-long hike in 95+ degree heat without bringing as much water as you can possibly carry… words to live by.)

I’ve only seen a couple of contact sheets so far, but I am falling in love. I’ve already noticed certain new patterns of seeing that emerged as I became more attuned to the landscape and to the climate. I think these patterns will be emphasized when I begin printing these photos in platinum in the fall. I will share a few images once I’ve gotten further along with developing and scanning, and then I’ll move on to printing the portfolio. I am very much looking forward to watching this series of photographs take shape and releasing them into the world.

This is definitely my last post until I get back. I have a plane to catch, after all!

I realized as I was getting everything together that packing photographic equipment for a trip is hard. How do you decide what goes and what stays? How do you optimize for weight and space? How do I make sure nothing gets broken? Have I forgotten anything?

Of course I’ve forgotten something. But I won’t know what it is until I’m already on the plane. Then I’ll smack myself on the forehead and say “Dag nabbit, I forgot my discomboobulator! ” If you learn one thing from reading this blog, it should be “Never forget your discomboobulator.”

Here’s a snapshot of what I’m bringing with me.

Let’s see…

• Hasselblad 500c/m.
• YashicaMat 124G (for color film, mostly, but also as a backup in a pinch).
• Manfrotto 190XDB tripod with 486 RC2 ballhead (the 055XProB is just too big).
• Minolta Spotmeter F (with extra battery) plus an old General Electric selenium meter for emergencies.
• Various filters, hoods, cable release.
• Trusty notebook.
• 31 rolls of Ilford HP5 120 (should be good for 14 days, right? Two rolls a day is a lot for me) plus three rolls of Fuji Pro 160S color negative film just for fun.
• Spare 120 take-up reel. I’ve never actually needed one of these, but, why not?
• Screwdriver in case the Hasselblad locks up.
• Lens cleaning tissue.
• Kitchen timer for night photography.
• Italian phrasebook.
• Bubble level.
• Baseball hat (Brooklyn Cyclones, yeah!), lip balm, chewing gum, sunglasses, canteen, granola bars, sunblock.
• A nice Tamrac Adventure 7 backpack to put it all in. (Well, some of it will be checked, but you get the idea.)

So what am I forgetting???

Photograph by Dalton Rooney

I am leaving the heat of New York City for the heat of Sicily for a couple of weeks, so this is likely to be my last post before I go. I should have lots of exposed film when I return, but I won’t be posting very many photos right away. If all goes well, I will be printing the photos from this trip in platinum/palladium in the fall and creating a nice portfolio. That will be fun to watch, I am sure that learning platinum and palladium will give me lots to blog about when I get back.

See you in July!