One Of My Favorite Images

I have a beautiful 11X14 print of this image framed and hanging on the wall but my scanner is too small. This is another one of those horrid old contact sheets that I used for the scan. The partial white circle on the upper left is where I'd punched a hole for the three ring binder where I used to keep them.

At the time we were living in a third floor apartment in New Bedford, Mass. I was playing around with using a pin hole aperture in front of the lens on my Minolta Autocord. I arrasnged several items on the kitchen table in front of the window. The sea gull is one of a pair of book ends. The other had a broken wing and eventually this one broke also. The ashtray was made by my father during one of his arty phases. I put the Minolta Autocord on a tripod, stuck the pin hole between the lens and a light yellow filter. I made several exposures, ranging from about one to perhaps five minute long. This particular one has a ghost cigarette. I'd forgotten that the cigarette was burning in the ashtray as part of the composition and picked it up for a toke about halfway through the exposure. I liked this shot best.

My Son Jonathan

I was attempting to make mayhem out of madness, an impossible task really, but it was raining outside all damned day just like yesterday so I decided to do laundry. The darkroom is the laundry room. I designed it that way. The washing machine drains into the sink and the top is extra counter space used for the paper cutter.

I noticed that the wooden counter where the two enlargers sit was about invisible beneath the clutter, everything from dodging tools to boxes of reloadable cassettes, masking tape, a couple of pair of scissors, and scads of "work prints", the prints you make to see how the image looks bigger than a contact sheet or with a different contrast or to zero in on exposure. Another function for them is using the backside for scrbbling phone numbers and reminders to myself to do this or do that. That was the madness that I needed to change into simple mayhem.

Towards the bottom of one pile I found this photo. The last time I'd really cleaned the place was, I think, about seven years ago, about the time that my daughter Elena decided that I was the cause of all of her problems and stopped talking to me. Jonathan still talks to me. He'll turn 33 later this month so I'm guessing that he was about 25 when I took this photo of him. I have no idea what restaurant or which city. I do see that there's an ashtray on the table so it dates back to when smoking sections were still to be found.

Tomorrow is my daughter Elena's birthday. I guess I'll dig out a shot of her to post. Or maybe I just won't bother.