Olympus-OM
[Top] [All Lists]

[OM] In the beginning . . . or getting ready for the Olympus Odyssey. L

Subject: [OM] In the beginning . . . or getting ready for the Olympus Odyssey. Long.
From: NSURIT@xxxxxxx
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2006 11:11:07 EDT
While in the UK a couple of years ago, I bought a coffee mug which a  
caricature of the Pope on a pogo stick.  The caption under it was "Pope  
springs 
eternal."  The play on words made me laugh so I bought it as a gift  for one of 
my 
cousins.  I bought another one by the same artist which  depicted a bunch of 
wolves pushing lawn mowers around creating patterns in the  grass. Its caption 
was, "Wolf gang mows art."  Again it made me laugh and  now resides with 
another cousin in Baton Rouge.  This is a rather long way  of getting around to 
saying, "Pope springs eternal" and I'm sure the Odyssey  camera will make its 
way to Sugar Land before next spring.  I was a little  worried when it hadn't 
arrived before the 6th, however that is behind us now and  I remain very 
popeful 
the camera will get here soon.
 
Last Tuesday I began a "basic B&W darkroom" class at the Glassell  School at 
the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.  Other than a brief bad  experience at 
Rice University continuing education several years ago, it has  been about 33 
years (that would be 1973) since I've really spent any time in a  photographic 
dark room.  Yes, I've been in dark rooms and had my head in  dark places since 
then, but I'm talking about getting my hands in chemistry,  stains on my 
clothes and dropping something that doesn't need to be on the floor  in a 
totally 
dark room.  You get the picture, which in this case I  guess would be a B&W one.
 
This class is the prerequisite for their other classes.  What drew me  to 
take classes at Glassell is the work of several other photographers I  have 
seen 
over the past few years.  Each was doing very nice work and each  was also 
going through the program at the MFA school.  Students have  access to a nice 
B&W 
darkroom while registered and from what I can see the  instructors are very 
competent. All of this may not seem too strange, until you  factor in my having 
earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Photography in 1971 .  . . but then 
one needs to factor in that I put down my cameras for about 28  years.
 
Our first class was essentially, "this is a camera."  Pretty cool,  given one 
of the premises under which we are working on the  Odyssey is, "this is an 
OM."   There are just a few fairly basic  assignments over the next couple of 
months and one of the constants is shooting  at least two 36 exposure rolls of 
Tri-X each week.  Although not stated in  the assignment, I have taken on a 
self assignment of "think about what the heck  you are doing with each 
exposure, 
pay attention to what you know and see what  you can discover that you don't 
know."  That can have you be more "focused"  before you release the shutter.  
So in the last 24 hours I've exposed my  two rolls and have just loaded 
another.  Guess I should be using my OM 1 if  I were wanting to get in practice 
for 
the Odyssey, however old habits are hard  to break, and as several of you would 
guess, it is an OM 2S that has been  getting a workout.  Most of what I shot 
on the first two rolls was  done with the 85mm f2, either with or without some 
extension.  I've also  used the 50mm f3.5, a silver nosed 50mm f1.8 (Ken, I 
don't know where that one  came from), 16mm f3.5 and a pinhole body cap.  
Probably have done  variations of 20+ different subjects.
 
One of the places I was doing some work was at a drum store/school  that a 
friend of mine owns.  We had talked, in the past, about my  doing some 
photography in his store.  He has suggested that I set  up a show of the work 
I'm doing 
in his shop and then we will have a  "gallery opening" and jam session for 
musicians and photographers.  That  could be pretty neat, as his facility in 
really nice and the room we would do it  in would be perfect for a show.  
Large, 
well lit, bare walls, stage.   I'll tell you what I told him, "Lets see what 
we get"  and what I'll tell  you that I didn't tell him is that I'll get some 
good images.  I've always  been fascinated with the patterns, textures, 
designs, etc. in his  store.   Although I could mix some color in with the B&W, 
I  
see this as being a B&W exhibit.  We will see . . . 
 
What I'm experiencing and what I suspect others who have done their Odyssey  
images have experienced, is a little like checking your hard drive for  
viruses.  It is a scan of your brain to check and see what you have in  those 
files 
that has worked in the past and revisiting those files that have  material 
which didn't work and seeing what you might do to produce a different  result 
this time.  This is also a process which clears up space to create  new files, 
so 
I guess perhaps I'm doing a de-frag at the same time.  When  was the last 
time you did a brain scan?  Perhaps this Odyssey project will  give a few 
others 
the opportunity to do their version of this  process.
 
So folks, I've gone to the utilities and am anxiously awaiting the arrival  
of the Odyssey camera.  If it shows up this summer, you will likely see  some 
B&W rather than color from Texas.   Until then I'll just keep  running those 
utilities.  <[8^)  Bill Barber    


==============================================
List usage info:     http://www.zuikoholic.com
List nannies:        olympusadmin@xxxxxxxxxx
==============================================

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
Sponsored by Tako
Impressum | Datenschutz