Borderland: New Work From Estonia
Just before completing a month's residency at CopperLeg Artist Residency in Vaskjala, Estonia, I had an opening for the photographs that I made and printed there. During my month in Estonia I made trips to eastern and southeastern Estonia, close to the Russian border. I was photographing the land and the people's use of it as well as the scars on the land from the abandoned Soviet era buildings.
At CopperLeg, I made a portfolio of silver gelatin prints in their darkroom. Additionally, I exhibited digital prints from both a digital camera and from an iPhone. Below are some of the images.
Borderland
Everybody's always on their device
Sea Wall. Praia Grande, Portugal
The mobile device sure has put the post card industry to sleep. Everyone is a photographer now. It's amazing that traveling during the past three or four years, I find everyone is on their mobile device, no matter where they are. Everyone is proclaiming "I am here" with an ubiquitous selfie. I've always felt that I lived much of the places where I've traveled through a camera view finder or behind the ground glass of a view camera. The phenomenon of the mobile device camera goes way past what I imagined twenty years ago, that the future of photography might be. And yes, I use an iPhone to capture images as well.
Bodegas Ysios
This is an iPhone capture using a wide angle Moment lens mounted on my phone. The location is Bodega Ysios in Laguardia, Spain, in Rioja. This place has been on my bucket list for years. The architect is Santiago Calatrava of whom I am I big fan. What's cool about the image is that during the conversion from RGB to grayscale, those strange artifacts popped up in the upper corners, For me that's a positive, not a negative.
Palacio Carlos V
The interior courtyard of the Palacio Carlos V in Granada, Spain. The architect was Pedro Machuca, and construction started in 1527. It is an architectural gem just begging for black & white photography.