I’ve just finished developing shots made with my Zero Image Pinhole during my stay at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Amherst, Virginia.  I was able to develop the negatives using the coffee and vitamin C mix, Caffenol C, but didn’t have a scanner.  So these first looks at the negatives are worked up from digital shots on a light table–a way to keep up and running while on the road.

I used Fuji Acros 100 film and spot metered for the bright snow.  The radiating slats are partial angles of a wood sculpture that sits out in the field, across from the art studios here.  I shot them in late afternoon light and love the graphic effect but will see how they work up later in a scan.

White Sycamore, Sweet Briar College

Filed under: photography, Uncategorized Tagged: Caffenol C, Fuji Acros, pinhole photography, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts ]]> http://carolmcgorry.com/2010/02/28/from-the-field/feed/ 1 carolmcgorry slats1-b Slats 5 Slats3 slats6 Sycamore3 http://carolmcgorry.com/2010/02/06/snowfalls-at-vcca/ http://carolmcgorry.com/2010/02/06/snowfalls-at-vcca/#comments Sat, 06 Feb 2010 21:26:42 +0000 carolmcgorry http://carolmcgorry.com/?p=766 ]]>

Filed under: photography, Uncategorized Tagged: Virginia Center for the Creative Arts ]]> http://carolmcgorry.com/2010/02/06/snowfalls-at-vcca/feed/ 0 carolmcgorry Gate2VCCA Cabin5Vcca HorseVCCA http://carolmcgorry.com/2010/01/16/coffee-infusion/ http://carolmcgorry.com/2010/01/16/coffee-infusion/#comments Sun, 17 Jan 2010 01:48:49 +0000 carolmcgorry http://carolmcgorry.com/?p=731 ]]>

Wissahickon Creek, Fairmont Park, Philadelphia

Late Leaf Fall, Shelburne Farms, Vermont

Stop by Studio 239 in Bayport this Saturday, December 5th,  between 2 and 6 in the afternoon, to view new black and white prints made along the hillsides of Vermont and shot with my Zero Image, pinhole camera.   (See additional images here in Portfolio.)

The show will also feature the most recent prints from my Shetland Islands series–overlapping, panoramic images of cliffs and bays printed on Japanese Unryu and hung as scrolls; wavy, blue and green grasses, blowing in the ever present wind at Shetland on Canson Rag Photographique; and grainy, black and white pinhole shots of my great-grandmother’s croft.

Email me for directions: studio239@gmail.com.

The shot below, of Burra Voe in Northmavine, is printed on Washi Unryu; the natural swirls in the paper add to the ripples on the water’s surface, to the sense of constant movement in the bay off Yell Sound.

Burra Voe, Shetland Islands

Sheep.  Sheep.   Sheep.

They’re everywhere in Shetland—on the hillside, next to the road,     near the shore.

You see them in your dreams.

Next week, in Vermont with Stephen Schaub of Indian Hill Imageworks, I’ll be experimenting with an encaustic treatment of some Shetland images, layering prints with wax and—hopefully—burnishing in strands of raw fleece brought home from the isles.

Posted in photography, Uncategorized Tagged: Shetland Sheep ]]> http://carolmcgorry.com/2009/10/30/sheep-dreams/feed/ 0 carolmcgorry Sheep Dreams http://carolmcgorry.com/2009/09/25/eshaness-peninsula/ http://carolmcgorry.com/2009/09/25/eshaness-peninsula/#comments Fri, 25 Sep 2009 18:43:55 +0000 carolmcgorry http://carolmcgorry.com/?p=601 ]]>

When you walk out from Eshaness Lighthouse in the Shetland Islands onto a peninsula of once molten lava, the ground is spongy under your boot.  You step on low-growing wildflowers in the field; they bounce back.  You slip on moss spread over rock outcrops; some rocks lift.  This summer, on the day I walk out there with my son Alex, a rolling fog adds to this sense of the indefinite.

The fog or haar is common in early summer when warm air blows over the cool North Sea.  At the cliffs at Eshaness, 200 feet above sea level, it appears to come up from below, over the cliffs and into the walking fields.  We think to turn back but have an ordinance map to follow to the cut-in canyons and channels we’ve heard about.

The haar obscures the view as we walk.  We only get a sense of the first canyon when we see thousands of dive-bombing, grey and white Fumars scoot in and out of the fog, announcing the nearby 50-foot drop at Calder’s Geo.

We follow the contours of shallow lochs shaped like puzzle pieces, ellipses with sweeping arcs that curl back into the water.  Alex wanders off, inland, to the Loch of Houlland and a bronze-age broch; I stand alone on the open field.  The dampness in the air makes me cough; I’m lightheaded and wheeze but like the feeling of floating.

(These prints are made from digital scans of film negatives, first captured by overlapping frames within the camera and varying aperture.  They are each 11″ x 24.5″, made at Indian Hill Imageworks on Fabriano Artistico, 23″ x 31″.)

11 x 25, Fabriano Artistico

This new print of a Scarlet Splendens is part of my Desert Light series, working with overlapping negatives.  It’s not a cactus and so not related to the amazing Jumping Cholla that left broken cactus spines in my right hand since late April . . . had surgery last week to remove them . . .  they just wouldn’t leave on their own.

New Shetland work is next.

I’m staring here, straight into the rising Arizona sun—6 AM in the preserve just a few hundred feet from my sister-in-law Julie’s home in Phoenix.  Since I took that shot, I’ve learned that the taboo against shooting into the sun isn’t so much a matter of a bad shot as of magnifying the radiation, through the camera lens onto one’s retina—geez.  I also didn’t imagine the effect of the flare.

(11″ x 25″ on Fabriano Artistico)

This second print is a matter of slipping the film between 35mm frames within my ‘79 Olympus XA.  Shot at the Desert Botanical Garden, it jogs between  the Palo Verde and the Chihuly spires.  I’m working on this layering and slipping of frames before leaving again for the Shetland Islands, mid-May.

Crop Detail: 5″ x 5.5″

Posted in photography Tagged: Arizona, Chihuly, Desert Botanical Garden, Olympus XA, Phoenix ]]> http://carolmcgorry.com/2009/05/01/desert-light/feed/ 3 carolmcgorry treeflare chichuly5 chihuly-crop http://carolmcgorry.com/2009/04/16/art-show-eeac-april-17-may-29-09/ http://carolmcgorry.com/2009/04/16/art-show-eeac-april-17-may-29-09/#comments Fri, 17 Apr 2009 01:04:21 +0000 carolmcgorry http://carolmcgorry.com/?p=402 ]]>

These three images are from a series shot in 2007, of bamboo gardens near the River Chiani in Umbria, Italy.  The third image is featured this month and next, in the Driven to Abstraction show at the East End Arts Council–opening reception tomorrow evening, April 17th, 5 to 7 PM, 133 East Main Street, Riverhead, NY.

We were just a few hours into spring last Friday morning, and yet had snowflakes.  Crazy winter on Long Island.  Snowstorms.  Cold.

I’ve been working these past months, piloting a couple of film cameras to work with in Shetland this May.  I don’t think I would otherwise have tortured myself, photographing in the frigid air, and the snow is sometimes so uninspiring.  So I stayed near home and ended up photographing, again and again at Meadow Croft, John E.Roosevelt’s one-time summer home in Sayville.

I’ve passed this spot many times-less than a mile from my home-and never really walked in, but one Sunday, my friend Carol asked me to meet her there, to stop in at the wood shack at the far end of the estate where Barney offers tastes of the Loughlin wines grown there.  I left sooner than Carol, to walk around and try out my Olympus XA and LOMO 35mm cameras.  I bought the 1979 Olympus for just $75 at an online auction and the LOMO new and am trying to decide which effects I want.  They both have good lenses and work quickly, although the XA has a coupled rangefinder for precision focus, whereas the LOMO is a scale focus and I have to estimate the distance in feet and set the lens, a bit wacky, but maybe I want this.  (For more on these cameras, see thefigitalrevolution.com.)

Before Carol showed up, I walked around the open fields in front of the Dutch Revival house and then back toward the two-story garage.  I was photographing the garage from a predictable distance-more than 20 feet-easy, infinity on both cameras.  But then I noticed that one of the windows on the otherwise locked garage was open, less than an inch.  I pushed the window up a bit, just enough to prop the XA and LOMO on the ledge and shoot into a room where the light fell obliquely onto a back wall.  I guessed at the distance and shot a few frames, but, by the time Carol came up beside me, my fingers were burning from the cold, even with gloves on, and I could no longer advance the film levers.

We walked to Barney’s shack which is warmed by a  wood-burning stove and then took our wine in plastic cups back up to the house to sit in the rockers on the porch…feet up on the rail…no one in view.  I went back to Meadow Croft all winter; even though it was so often cold, because it was eerie and mysterious and silent.  And last week I borrowed an Olympus XA-4–a later XA model that like the LOMO is scale focused but it has a 28mm lens–more in the frame and more depth of field.

Further test shots to follow.