Clearing Storm -

Charlottesville

An afternoon storm in the mountains begins to clear away - that is a good time to be at a good vantage point with a camera. Even with the advantages of working digitally, I found this picture more difficult to print than I had supposed it would be. If you have ever made a print from a slide, you will have experienced the same problem - you just can’t get the luminous quality of a transparency or a monitor, on to a page that is opaque. You can perhaps come a little closer with a glossy paper that with the matte surface I like to print on, but still, without the light behind it, it is not the same. I remember some years ago pondering making a frame that was a lightbox and mounting a silver print on it, thereby bringing out the additional detail that I knew was there. Now, of course, there is the digital picture frame, and if it is not being done already, I am sure that in the near future there will be entire shows hung that consist of a good-sized digital frame with a constantly changing slide-show of the works that the artist has chosen to display at that time, or of a collection of digital frames.

This picture was made with a Minolta Dimage 7, the complex and extremely versatile digital camera that I jumped to from the world of film. It will not win a race with a newer camera, but has a fine lens and is capable of making excellent photographs - I should use it more often than I do these days. It did not take me long working digitally to realize that I could print either color or black and white from the same file. Although this subject is best served by color, the Baldhead Light and Salem Steps pictures make very effective black-and-whites. I am happy, though, to be able to make color photographs with more control and less expense than before, and so do it more often.