Moregon
October 29, 2017
For the eclipse my father rented a cabin in a little town called Medford. Medford’s a couple hours from Crater Lake and a couple more to Albany where we would be in the path of totality. Not to sounds like every other person who saw the eclipse, but for me and my family, the experience was nothing short of magical. I’ve never seen the sky do what it did. I’ve never seen light behave the way it behaved. I got goose-bumps when the temperature dropped the way that it did. It truly was a once in a lifetime experience and I’m ever so grateful that I had the opportunity to be there.
On the days leading up to the even we traveled around Medford to various volcanic formations and natural formations. I took couple different cameras with me, but the Mamiya ended-up being the goto. Film-wise I took old faithful, Tri-X, all of which you’re seeing above. I also took a couple rolls of Velvia 50, which I’m a little meh about. I’ve tried a few different methodologies of scanning color in general, not just slides, and I haven’t really been satisfied. That lack of a color workflow keeps me from shooting color, but I may have it figured out now. I hate using plugins as a rule but I’ve started scanning C-41 and slides to raw and then converting them using Color Perfect in Photoshop and I’m finally getting decent results now. Maybe I’ll rescan those rolls using that method. Maybe not. We’ll see.
There were raging forest fires at the time so our trips to Crater Lake and elsewhere were set against the backdrop of an ashen white sky, from dawn to dusk. On the southside of Crater Lake, you couldn’t see the Lake. Your vision just dissipated into a fuzzy grey blur. I made images anyway and they’re interesting if not what I had hoped they would be. I had no idea how incredibly beautiful Oregon was going to be. It was stunning. The waterfalls. The scenic vistas. The hiking trails on volcanic formations. I even loved the drives from place to place. I want to go back. I want to go back tomorrow.
The barber shop image was made in a small town called Jacksonville–a sleepy little pac-northwest mining town that time literally forgot. We wandered around Main St. there for an hour or so, looked through the local photo gallery and toy shop, then headed back to Medford for dinner and sunset.
All images shot on the Mamiya6MF on Kodak Tri-X film pushed to 800 at the Icon.