From Barry University To Rootz Gallery

Here I am with Mario Flores at his Rootz Gallery a few weeks ago. Most of these prints are well over thirty years old. As I was digging them out of my files I ran across a lot of old magazines and advertising brochures featuring my photographs. A lot of that dated back to the period of twenty-five or so years when I did all the photography for Barry College (now Barry University) in nearby Miami Shores.

Claudia, my ex-wife called me a few days ago to tell me that her friend Ann had passed away. I knew Ann from back in the days when she worked at Barry, long before I'd met Claudia. A memorial sevice for Ann will be held Friday morning in the chapel and Claudia wanted me to know. She and I will go there together, but I also want to take a few photographs around the campus while I'm there.

The school has grown a lot over the past twenty-five years. I thought that it might be interesting to photograph some of the same buildings and scenes as they look today and put them here on thepriceofsilver along with the images from those old publications.

I also want to visit the school library. They have several of my prints included in their collection, and they're framed and on display in the library. They're from my Miccosukee Indian series. I'd like to get some photos of the prints hanging in there. Claudia is going to tell me that I'm on campus for a memorial service and to return some other time to take my pictures. Then she's going to yell at me for not getting a haircut. Some things never change.

I Ain't Got A Clue In Hell...

...where I took this photograph...LOL

I always carry a camera with me, and it's usually set up with a 15mm ultra wide angle Heliar lens. I've always been fascinated by extreme wide angle perspectives. It does some interesting things with diagonal lines in the composition. It also causes strange distortions of round type shapes in the corners, making them appear more egg shaped than they are in reality, but having a distorted head is worth it if I like the picture otherwise.

My good friend photographer Todd Frederick, digital maven, usually posts my pictures here on the blog. Every few weeks I mail him a bunch of CD's. When Walgreens develops the film they make the CD, all the pictures on the roll, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Most times I've never really seen the pictures other than the tiny images on the "Index Print". Todd picks an image that intrigues him and posts it. Then he emails me a detailed message, such as "Posted". That's when I find out what in hell I'm supposed to be writing about. Probably a month later and a bunch of rolls since I shot it. I should take notes but I don't. This was taken "Somewhere", reasonably recently, and within maybe ten miles of my house. It appeared on my screen within the hour.

What was different this morning was me emailing Todd with a "Got it!" before he emailed "Posted" to me. I'd been killing time while drinking my morning coffee and enjoying my first cigarette of the day by googling my name to see what might turn up that's new. I discovered this: http://journals.aol.com/rap4143/MyDayMyInterests/ and clicked on Photographer/Writer Al Kaplan which, at least for today, brought up this shot, probably because it's my most recent blog entry.

I also discovered this link. http://www.10thstreetcamera.com/link.htm The site contains a short list of blog and website links, and there I am!

" Al Kaplan is a Miami area photographer who maintains a blog about his everyday life." Now the coffee cup is empty and Todd is threatening me with great bodily harm if I don't get my butt into the darkroom and make some black and white prints. Together with Mario at ROOTZ Gallery wanting to see more of my work I guess I ought to do just that!

Back To My Real Rootz ~ Black & White!

photo (c)2008 Mario Flores


I was carrying my Bessa with the 15mm lens as usual when I got into a conversation with a guy, Mario Flores, carrying a Nikon DSLR. He said that he'd recently opened a gallery here in North Miami, that he too was a photographer, and that he was exhibiting photography along with other media. He invited me to stop by and show him some of my work, which I did a few days later.

I showed him a bunch of prints from the 1960's and 70's, a few more recent things like my self portraits with the 15mm lens, and a few of my current project which results in some very absract images.

I get the effect by not developing the prints in a tray. I splatter Dektol developer on the exposed paper, sometimes leaving the drops in place for well over 5 minutes, then tilting the paper this way and that to sort of control where the drops wander across the paper. The long development under the drops causes bromiding, which results in grey streaks as well as streaks of normal developed image. The grey streaks continue out over the white borders outside the image. A few of the photos also have hand prints, where I've pressed my hands directly on the paper for a few minutes after soaking them with Dektol. Fortunately I'm not allergic to the metol in the Dektol. Some people can really get a bad rash.

The artists that were exhibiting and their friends loved those prints, but by and large the photographers who saw them wondered why I had the guts to screw up a print so badly, and then have the audacity to hang it in a gallery...LOL. I did sell another 11X14 of my Janis Joplin photo and one of the abstracts in the days before the show opened. Saturday I'll stop by the gallery and see what's going on there.

http://www.rootzgallery.com/