Brief thoughts on small spaces and intimacy in landscapes

October 02, 2024

The images in this post were made during a mid-day walk in the 270 acre Lone Pine State Park near my home in Kalispell, Montana. I walk in this park a lot. Its proximity to my house makes it a quick and easy place with 7 miles of forested trails to stroll through.

A not insignificant portion of the work that I have made over my years of making photographs have been made in small natural spaces like this one. Small state parks, nature preserves, conservation areas, wildlife protection areas, manifold little enclaves of natural splendor miraculously partitioned off to keep the ravenous destructive powers of the modern world at bay, if only for a little while.

I’ve always had a predilection for returning to the same places, over and over. Forming a genuine relationship and connection to the places I’m photographing rather than one-off visits to far off exotic areas. Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy hiking off in to the wilderness as much as the next person but the fanfare associated with getting to lost in the wilderness is often significant. And these small spaces are often closer and easier to revisit again and again than the multi-day backpacking trip miles and miles in to the backcountry.

In the past I have connected this focus on small spaces to the attempt to rebuild our broken connection to the world, to the spiritual importance of our rootedness in the webs of being that surround us, and to the conviction that the best place to begin building that is where we stand, in the places of beauty and salvation close at hand no matter how small. For example this was discussed in an old interview with Andrew McClees here.

I still believe all of this, in the salvific power of nature. But even more so lately I have become convinced of the importance of the redemptive beauty that can be found shining in these small quiet spaces of our day to day lives. The overgrown fence lines, the anarchic defiance of riparian habitats blossoming around neglected stream banks, and the sublime beauty of the landscape left to shine its quiet radiance. All these small little glimmers of beauty have taken on a deepened sense of interest to me in that light.

Images shot on the Leica M4-2 with the TTArtisan 28/5.6 in Kentmere 100 rated at 200.

Wandering Logan Creek and Adjacent Country

September 27, 2024

September 25, 2024:

Wherein I shot a roll of Kentmere 100 through the M4-2 with the Zeiss 50/2. The film was pushed two stops in conditions that absolutely did not warrant it. The morning was a bit cloudy and in the dense forest the 100 speed film was not quite fast enough, so I pushed it to 400. Then the sun came out and I was left shooting a slow speed film pushed two stops in some very contrasty light. Contrasty film, contrasty light… I was nervous about developing and scanning this roll.

All things considered I think I was able to pull it off. I developed the film in Ilfotec HC 1+31 and cut the development time a bit to try and control highlight development, as well as taking it easy on agitation. I think this experience as well as the other morning was enough for me to reconsider my previous theory that I could shoot a 100 speed film as my main stock and then push it as necessary. Given the broad range of conditions that I shoot in I think I’m better off sticking to the 400 speed films that I’ve shot for years, and pulling the film if I’m shooting in very bright conditions.

All that technical nonsense aside, here is a selection of the images to enjoy

A quiet Tuesday morning, my grandpa's old camera, and a roll of Kentmere 100

September 26, 2024

I share my house with a cattle dog puppy. His name is Ruckus, and his namesake is incredibly fitting. He has a lot of energy, and if you don’t burn off his energy he is an absolute menace to live with. So Tuesday morning I decided to take him for a long walk around town around sunrise to burn off some of his early morning energy and maybe get some respite from his craziness later in the day.

And what better time is there to grab a camera to bring on the walk than sunrise on a beautiful fall morning? I decided to grab my grandpa’s old Minolta XD5 and the 28/2.8. I shoot my Leica(s) a lot but my M mount 28 has a maximum aperture of f5.6 so it seemed like the faster 28 on the Minolta was a better choice. And, sometimes using an SLR is an interesting changeup.

I grabbed a roll of Kentmere 100, in part because I have a bunch of them and I’m trying to shoot through it. I haven’t enjoyed the 100 speed version of Kentmere as much as the 400 speed variant but that’s a topic for another article, perhaps. All that aside, I ended up rating it at 400 in order to get some decent shutter speeds. I opted to stand development in Rodinal, 1:100. You can almost never go wrong with Rodinal and as much as I’m not a huge fan of the grain structure of Kentmere 100 the results were pretty workable.

Enjoy the rest of the gallery below!