National Camera Day was actually yesterday, but I had a full schedule to work on, thus while taking notice, I had to defer writing anything about it.
In thinking about it this morning, I realized that this might be an opportunity or a two-fer, part illustrating my favorite film rig in action and second riffing a bit about the photographic and artistic process. First part is easy; camera/back/prism, lens/hood, expired film (hidden in plane view), cable release, and tripod/ball-head. done. any questions?
Second part is a bit more interesting; I had taken note of the fallen tree flowers last year but did not take any photographs for a number of reasons. Nevertheless, had made note to follow up this year. These fallen purple blooms had a tear-like appearance which I thought could be a wonderful metaphor for my Gardening For Ordnance project. Second, I wanted to capture these on the ground with a cast tree shadow, thus a lot of surrounding shadows to provide a bit more of a ‘darker’ mystery to the final image.
Of course the unknown is what might occur with the expired transparency film, which in this case was only expired fourteen years ago. Which is ‘young’ compared to some of my other expired color transparency film that I have used and still have a bit left. Actually I am just about out of the expired color film, which is fortunate as I am also coming to a closing point working on this project. But fun stuff as to the serendipity as to what comes out of the developer so I am still open to finding more expired 120 film.
Another aspect that is revealed in this image from my one of my digital cameras that I was using to document my work, is what’s occurring outside the frame. That is one interesting aspect of a photographic image, it truncates the natural world as there are many other things occurring outside the film’s edge. When we look at a photograph, it can be difficult to image what was beyond the boundary of the image, or occurring just before, and of course immediately afterwards.
So while I was making this still life, I could smell the sweetness of the flowering tree and I could also smell the pungent asphalt that was being laid on the adjacent street. As well as all of the noise of the machinery and asphalt paving process with the large trucks pulling up to dump their loads into the paving machinery. And of course the noisy progression of passing cars. Fun stuff.
Cheers & stay safe,
Doug
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My other exhibitions and workshops:
The Photographers Eye’s gallery exhibition, Living and Photographing in the Time of COVID-19, group virtual exhibition that includes two of my diptychs from the series A Developing Crisis. This online exhibition is from May 8th through August 1st, 2020.
Medium Photo 2020 Workshop: Developing a Creative Book workshop that I will be leading, is now rescheduled for September 24 – 27th, 2020, a four-day extended weekend workshop in San Diego.
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Featured artwork; Untitled (Gardening For Ordnance/Rancho Santa Margarita) copyright 2020, Douglas Stockdale
Singular Images 
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