Size: 7.5” x 7.5” on 8.5” x 11” JonCone Studio Type 5 Paper

Signed & stamped in verso

The practice of art is not always poetical, it’s quite often practical. A series of mechanical procedures to produce something interesting. What it emotionally means can, and will, come later, after development and printing and thought. The trick with photography is the technical procedures can get quite complex, but they need to happen quickly to expose whatever it is you’re trying to capture. It’s a medium that requires prodigious practice, especially with analog materials, to get to a place where the act of photographing is second nature allowing you to focus on creative decisions.

The clouds were ebbing and flowing around the upper stretches of Mt. Whitney. I could see this forming from 30 miles away and spent half that distance trying to find a decent foreground. While searching for a foreground my brain is moving through the creative choices and matching the technical procedures to them

• Deep black sky and high contrast - red #25 filter

• Cloud movement, but not too much - neutral density 3 stops, guessing at a 5 second exposure

• Can’t lose the mountain - 120mm lens, plus this will help accentuate the cloud movements

• Little to no foreground interest - inverted 2-stop split neutral density filter

• Bright clouds - place them on Zone VII

• Exposure guess - B shutter to keep it open, probably EV of 4

This all happens before I’ve setup my tripod, it’s all internal and takes about ten seconds once I’ve chosen my creative directions. Unzipping my bag, extending the tripod, pulling out the camera and hooking up the required filters, meter reading on clouds, all is so practiced it’s second nature.

And then I lean over and press my eye to the viewfinder and the world around me ceases to exist. I am left alone, in my little framed world and nothing can touch me. Freedom.

Location: Eastern Sierra

Technical Info: Hasselblad, Kodak T-Max 100 BW Film, Zeiss 50mm, Deep Red #25, 3-stop NP, 4” exposure, developed in Kodak X-tol 1:1